Cabinet E15

Finally, the presence of the unusual piano decorated with Oriental motifs reflects a taste for travel. Its design is typical of late 19th-century Parisian pianos, commonly found in bourgeois living rooms. It illustrates how a Western object was adapted to suit the Orientalist trend of the time—despite the fact that Arabic music does not traditionally use the piano. Its owner spent part of her life in Algeria with her husband, a lawyer at the Algiers court. A friend of Fernand Daguin, she bequeathed the instrument to the town of Châtillon-sur-Seine.