Soundboard Painting Kits

The Flemish style kit, with flowers and birds surrounded with blue arabesque borders, is based on instruments made by Ioannes Ruckers in the first half of his career, between 1612 and 1625. It is relatively simple and produces exquisite results.

The French style kit, with its formal 'vignette' and beautiful bouquets, is more sophisticated than the Flemish and allows you to execute a more complex decoration with ease.

At the height of instrument building in Flanders and France, harpsichords always had decorated soundboards. We have become accustomed to the appearance of these classical instruments, and a harpsichord with an unpainted soundboard can look partly unfinished.

The purpose of the instruments we build is primarily musical, and the musical value will not be compromised if the decoration is plain, or less elaborate than was customary in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But most of our customers wish to emulate in full the original instruments that are most admired.

The Zuckermann Soundboard Painting Kits enable you to create an attractive, historically-based soundboard painting even if you have no decorative painting experience.

Sheila Barnes of Edinburgh devised our kits, which are available in either the Flemish or French style. These kits provide you with all the necessary materials, including detailed instructions that also give some historical background, full-size drawings for use as patterns, dry pigments, gum Arabic (the correct medium), professional-quality brushes, a palette knife and containers to store the colors.