Hurdy gurdy

This diminutive hurdy-gurdy reflects the idealized—and often eroticized—vision of rural life embraced by the French aristocracy in the early 1700s. The pegbox depicts a woman suggestively lifting her skirts to reveal jeweled tuning pegs. The instrument is sounded by cranking a wheel while pressing keys along the neck, motions sometimes portrayed as masturbatory. Strings and moving parts were often concealed in polite company. Lifting the covers revealed the erotic intersection of mechanization, bodies, and music.