Interlude

I mentioned in one of the posts below that I don't have much time to give this project, and indeed, I've been a bit swamped at work since the last post and have not been able to turn my attention to the harmonium again.  There it sits in my music room, wanting attention.  This is frustrating, but such is my life at the moment.

Finally, this morning, I had a few minutes that I could devote to the instrument.  My exploration this morning is zeroing in on the metallic fabric remnants attached to the underside of the music rack.  I am pretty sure that, at one time, a panel of fabric was stretched across the bottom of the music rack, and would have hidden the backs of the keys, as the red fabric is doing in this picture of a harmonium I found online:

Not my harmonium!  A picture I found online that clearly shows red fabric stretched across the opening
in the music rack frame, to hide the backs of the keys.  I believe fabric was used here (rather than, for instance,
a solid piece of wood), because if this harmonium is like mine, the forté shutters are directly under
the keyboard, so the sound, in part, comes up through the back of the keys, and a piece of wood, rather
than fabric, would muffle the sound.

 But the question is: what was the fabric? Here is the underside of the frame that supports the music rack.  Although fragments of the gold metallic cloth are still attached to the bottom of the frame, one can also clearly see the remains of a red fabric glued to the perimeter of the opening:

The bottom side of the music rack frame.

Here are two close ups:

Was the red fabric the original (as in the top photo above)?  Did it rot, and then someone added the gold fabric, securing it with tacks?  If this is so, I would expect that the red fabric would have been trimmed, and would have some sort of a straight edge all the way around -- but it doesn't.  If the red fabric isn't the original, but rather is some sort of a treatment that supported the stretched gold fabric, why was that treatment necessary?

Even as I'm writing this, and especially, considering the top photo above (and other photos that show red or green fabric in that area), I'm beginning to think that the red fabric was indeed original.  By the time the gold fabric was installed, the red fabric could have rotted and disintegrated somewhat, which would explain the lack of a trimmed straight edge.  Also, it appears that the red fabric was carefully stretched and glued across the opening, which I would expect from a high-end 19th-century German harmonium builder; but the gold fabric was simply tacked in place, which looks like the work of an amateur.  

So back to my post about a restoration philosophy: I think, in this instance, I might not be doing too much damage if I remove the gold fabric remnants and stretch and glue into place a piece of red fabric similar to what I think is the original.  I welcome comments about that!

Thus ends this brief post ... hope I can get to this more frequently!  But, you know, I'm a church musician and December, with its demands, approaches ....