Two years ago, Martin Pühringer, an Austrian instrument-maker, contacted us about incorporating some of our designs into a harpsichord he was building.

Pühringer is an instrument maker who lives in Haslach, Austria, a remote medieval village situated at the southern edge of the Bohemian Forest. In his workshop he makes harpsichords and clavichords for select clients, building a small number of instruments each year. As he explains, his instruments are never exact copies of the antique originals, yet they are built using appropriate methods and materials that would have been used by traditional masters.

For the past 26 years, Martin has been handcrafting his instruments individually to order. Each one is inspired by a particular historical instrument or built in a style particular to a school or period in history. At Paperblanks we find this approach to be very similar to our own philosophy and the process we work through when designing a new collection. While our medium is books and his is instruments, we are each concerned with preserving the techniques of old world craft.

The Brocaded Paper Harpsichord

When he contacted us, Pühringer said he wanted to work with the paper from our Brocaded Paper series. We were happy to assist him with this so we provided him with sheets of our Flaming Gold press paper – and not more than a month later, he sent us photographs of his beautiful, handcrafted instrument: