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The double-action pedal harp you can see here was made by Johann Andreas Stumpff, a "very skilled pianoforte and harp maker" at the British royal court around 1820 and is one of the early double-action pedal harps made according to the most modern harp-making skills of the time. Stumpff - the son of a piano and instrument maker - learned the instrument-making trade in his father's workshop in the small town of Ruhla in Thuringia. In 1790 he went to London, founded his own workshop there in 1810 and successfully made pedal harps, which he improved on with his own inventions. Through several trips to Weimar, Dresden and Vienna, Stumpff became friends with the composers Carl Maria von Weber, Louis Spohr and Ludwig van Beethoven, among others, as well as the poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe. As a symbol of music and social gatherings, the harp conveys the esprit of an entire era.