French Origins
The earliest drawings of triangular-frame harps appear in the Utrecht Psalter, written and illustrated in the early 9th century from a scriptorium in Rheims. Ten of the illustrations show figures holding harp-like instruments, and in six of them the forepillar is clearly shown. The Utrecht Psalter was penned between 816-835 AD. and found its way to the scriptorium at Christ Church in Canterbury, England 970AD. where several copies were produced. Although portraits of the biblical King David playing a stringed instrument were already a feature of European religious manuscript art, manuscripts before this time show David with a medieval lyre rather than a harp.
Read more about this topic: Origin Of The Harp In Europe
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—William Percy French (1854–1920)
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—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)