Kunitachi  1401

According to the Museum, it is a 'Mahogany Bell harp with 12 strings, branded ZUMPE'.  Zumpe, is presumably Johannes Zumpe, the famous instrument maker who came to London in the 1750s. 'Zumpe' is engraved on one of the sides, and the date given by the Museum (and as given by the dealer) is c1780. 

It is surprising, perhaps, that Johannes Zumpe, by all accounts a very successful maker of square pianos, would have also made bell harps. But more pressing is the problem that this Zumpe bell harp has the same plain, rectangular box construction of the fairy bells instrument that appeared in England much later, around 1870.  It has single strings rather than the multiple courses of bell harps and English harps and there is no central bar or 'septum'. It has the same cut-outs in the top that fairy bells have, to allow access to the tuning pins/wrest pins. 

Is this a simple, but understandable, case of misidentification? This instrument is not of 18th century origin. It is just a rather untypical design of the fairy bells and probably made in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. It's an understandable mistake because organologists have lumped together instruments from the 18th century and from the later 19th century and classified them as bell harps, regardless of differences in both construction and in widely accepted nomenclature. 

At first glance Kunitachi 1401 looks very like a late 19th/early 20th century fairy bells instrument and nothing like an 18th century bell harp or English harp.  But it is surprisingly small. The typical dimensions of a fairy bells are: length 65 cms,  width 16.5 cms and  depth 5.8 cms. In contrast Kunitachi 1401: length 45.5 cms, width 15 cms and depth 6.8 cms.  (The typical length of the English harp/bell harp is 45-55cms). 

It is hard to tell from the low resolution photograph but there is something about the design of Kunitachi 1401 that is slightly more elegant than any of the later designs of fairy bells. Plain mahogany would be basic fare for an expensive, elegant 18th century instrument but it would be very unusual for the fairy bells. The fairy bells instrument was introduced as an inexpensive novelty and some players made their own.  The fairy bells instrument was mainly played by amateurs, probably of quite humble backgrounds, and also by performers in music hall/variety acts. The Zumpe instrument, made of mahogany, looks more expensive and aimed at a different market.

Compared to the fairy bells, Kunitachi 1401 is  both shorter and slightly deeper than a typical fairy bells. It has a separate soundboard whereas a typical fairy bells instrument is simply a box with the wrest pin planks and hitch pin plank/bridge glued and screwed to the back of the instrument. (But see Gallery of fairy bells for a very rare example of a fairy bells with a separate soundboard).

On a fairy bells the strings pass over the hitch pin bridge at the playing end and fasten on to screws.  (See Gallery of fairy bells, third photograph). Kunitachi 1401 is very different in that the strings fasten to large hitch pins at the playing end. And, unlike any other swung zither instrument (bell harp, English harp or fairy bells) at the playing end the hitch pin bridge (or 'saddle') is not a straight line across the instrument. There appear to be two separate 'saddles' forming a sort of V-shape on the hitch pin bridge. The strings get progressively shorter as the strings move from the outside to the middle of the instrument both by the angle of the 'saddles' at the playing end of the instrument and the positions of the tuning pins on the angled planks.

The tuning pins are somehow set into a metal plate rather than straight into planks of wood, but there are no more details on this. The tuning pins are all set lower down the instrument than on most fairy bells instruments so that the differences between the longest and the shortest string length is quite small. The cut-outs on the top of the Zumpe instrument are plainer than on most, but not all, fairy bells.

What makes this instrument so interesting is that it is obviously different from 18th century bell harps/English harps but it is also unlike a typical fairy bells instrument in some ways and unlike either in other ways.

Some differences between the Zumpe instrument and a typical fairy bells:

a) it is smaller.

b) it has a separate soundboard.

c) the strings fasten on to large hitch pins rather than screws.

d) the hitch pins are set on angled 'saddles'/bridges.

e) the tuning pins are set on a metal plate (but no more details are available).

f) it has a smaller range of string lengths

g) the cut-outs on the top of the instrument are plainer.

f) its mahogany construction - more elegant/expensive?

The question is: is this a genuine 18th century instrument anticipating the later fairy bells design or is it an unusual form of fairy bells made in the late 19th or early 20th century?  Some curious instruments exist which, in some ways, resemble bell harps or resemble fairy bells yet are also significantly different. (See Anomalous 'bell harps' for some examples).

If this instrument is genuinely from the 18th century instrument (whoever made it) it would be very hard to believe that someone in the 19th century had invented ‘fairy bells’ design without a knowledge of it. It would then be a reasonable conjecture that someone in Victorian times (R.W. Cook and Co.?) found a similar instrument or found some old plans or drawings from Zumpe’s workshop, or something along these lines, and designed the fairy bells.

If that should turn out to be the case, then another question arises.  Why did R.W. Cook and Co., or whoever designed the fairy bells, make the changes that they did make?  Why make it considerably larger? Kunitachi 1401 has 12 single strings but many fairy bells have only eight or ten. Why promote it, first and foremost, as a novelty that can mimic the sounds of bells and only secondarily as a simple musical instrument?

It would be anachronistic to call Kunitachi 1401, from the 1780s, a fairy bells instrument (unless some remarkable evidence were to be found that Zumpe actually intended it to have that name). But it’s also very different from all the other surviving bell harps. It’s problematic to call it, unequivocally, a bell harp.  It is so similar to other swung zither instruments that it is a member of that class of instruments but with its own characteristics and is neither a bell harp nor fairy bells. 

If this Zumpe instrument is genuinely of 18th century origin there would seem to be a direct link between the 18th century swung zither instruments and the later fairy bells. But it would represent a discontinuous leap of nearly a century from bell harp to fairy bells, rather than evidence of continuous swung zither activity from c.1780 to c.1870. 

However it’s difficult not to be, at least slightly, sceptical about this instrument. The date of c.1780 was that given by the seller. It was sold in London in the 1980s and so, probably, it would have been in Britain since the 18th century, but lurking unnoticed, uncatalogued and unrecorded. It is surely surprising that the name, Zumpe, engraved on this instrument, never called it to the attention of anyone in the small world of organologists, collectors and dealers. No one, from J.G. Dalyell in the mid 19th century to Eric Halfpenny in the Galpin Society Journal 1978 (see References) has ever discussed this oddity.

Why would Johannes Zumpe have been motivated to make such an instrument as this?  If the date is accurate, c.1780, Zumpe was nearing the end of his life, having had a very successful career as an instrument maker, at first of guitars and later of square pianos.