Bird whistle or nightingale whistle.

Collection type: Object
Description: Bird whistle or nightingale whistle.
Long description: Rectangular slab of wood, with rounded lower corners, containing 10 flute tubes; upper edge narrowed. paper print showing bird on bough, with Japanese inscription stuck on front surface. [LM-S 15/1/2020]
Geographical reference: Japan
Asia > Eastern Asia > Japan
Cultural groups: Japanese
Person: Field collector Miss K. Balfour; PRM source Henry Balfour
Date / Period: Date made: Before 1903
Date collected: ?1903
Acquisition information: Bequeathed: 1938
Materials and processes: Material Wood Plant, Material Paper Plant, Process Perforated, Process Hollowed, Process Glued, Process Decorated
Dimensions: Width: max 149 mm, Length: max 84 mm, Depth: max 15 mm
Object numbers: Accession number: 1938.34.290
Research and responses: This or 1938.34.289 is presumably the instrument referred to on page 43 of American Musical Instruments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, by Laurence Libin (New York and London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and W. W. Norton & Company, 1985). In a discussion of the Calliope, 'a ten-note diatonic panpipe' created by Charles W. Burgess of the Bostwick & Burgess Manufacturing Company of Norwalk, Ohio, in the late 1880s, Libin writes: 'Interestingly, a Japanese panpipe of nearly identical design exists in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, England; apparently contemporary with the Metropolitan Museum's Calliope, it may indicate a cross-cultural influence.' [JC 9 1 2014]

Search terms: Music, Figure, Musical Instrument, Bird Figure, Panpipes, Flute

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