Harp Guitar Images - Unidentified European Instruments

Vintage Harp Guitar Photographs,
Postcards, Cabinet Cards, Advertising & Ephemera

Unidentified European Instruments


There are very few instances of artists painting actual harp guitars. Clearly this was based on an real instrument.	A young Luigi Mozzani holds a standard guitar. Unknown player with a non-Mozzani instrument	And close-up	Postcard of Benedetto di Ponio, Italian harp guitarist.


Postcard of Italian virtuosos Silvio Casale and Mario Bosio.	A wonderful group of Italians in costume, c.1880(?) with three different harp guitars. One has removed the sub-bass strings from his instrument.


Another Italian instrument similar to one of those above.	*The Costantino Quaranta* orchestra from Brescia, Italy includes an unidentified Italian harp guitar. The others play Embergher instruments** (see the wonderful new site on Embergher mandolin history, Embergher.com created by Alex Timmerman).


No idea what country this group or the instrument hails from....


This interesting hollow-arm harp guitar looks like an Italian instrument, but may have been made in the States by one of the many Italian immigrant luthiers. This is the Les Adams group of Australia, c.1930.	The harp guitar on the right may be American-built, but looks vaguely Italian or ? From a Washburn catalog.


Austrian	Another German/Austrian instrument This photo can be purchased from Superior View.	And similar


More European instruments of unknown origin.


This is an extremely unusual European instrument with separate necks and reverse Stauffer-style headstocks.


This photographic postcard may have been reversed or not.	Presented as a right-handed model...	An unusual artistic studio shot where the instrument is "front and center."


Postcard sent from Sweden, 1910	Unknown - French or Viennese?	And closeup

Not a guitar-lute, despite the oval outline - this is a strange harp guitar with a very strange headstock and even stranger tuners. 2 sub-bass strings. At right is the same instrument, now with one string. Researcher/guitarist Andreas Stevens identified the player as Willi Meier-Pauselius. He says the strange instrument "is possibly his own creation. He and his father were violin makers and he announced in Der Gitarrefreund an instrument he had created." Andreas further adds. "Willi M-P was living in America in the 'twenties, and toured quite a lot. I received this information through one of his pupils."
(both images from the Mozzani book)

Godfred Christensen.

Courtesy of Erling Moldrup, from Guitaren: Et eksotisk instrument i den danske musik.


An Italian or Greek instrument played by a Gypsy	A Greek band with a harp guitar of unknown provenance. The santouri player is a well-known Greek musician named Giakomis Mondanaris. (Thanks to Tony Klein)

In Austria, "contra" or "bass" guitars eventually became known as "Schrammel" guitars - named after a general style of popular yet refined music developed by the Schrammel brothers. See Iconography: Identified European Instruments.

Here are some more formal Schrammel groups and other ensembles with Austrian, Bavarian or German harp guitars.


And a very unusual wappen harp guitar Danish player.	F. Schult, with no less than 5 very different models, including a nice cutaway!
Both courtesy of Erling Moldrup, from Guitaren: Et eksotisk instrument i den danske musik.


Boris Perott	Still from the 1944 Austrian movie, "Schrammeln"	Modern performer Eduard Reiser. (Courtesy of photographer Aram Voves )



This series of four c.1950 German photos shows the same harp guitar-playing gentleman. 3 with the same Schrammel type guitar, and 1 (upper left) with a different, theorboed version.


A balalaika and domra ensemble with an unusual harp guitar.	This woman plays a wappen-shaped 7-strings-on-the-neck Russian harp guitar.

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Austrian, German? Courtesy of The Musical Eye, www.musurgia.com	What country?


This illustration depicts a Schrammel group that the clarinetist Georg Dänzer (of the original Schrammel Quartet) played with (Nov 12, 1882)	A garden party (with the same group?)


	A very fancy wappen-shape harp guitar. Courtesy of The Musical Eye, www.musurgia.com


An informal group in Berlin.	A very early album cover of Roland Neuwirth & Extremschrammeln


		This Viennese harp guitar is particularly unusual. (image courtesy of the Special Collections Department, University of Iowa Libraries)


2 different postcards of the same photograph.


	From a Wilhelm Kruse Markneukirchen catalog, c.1914