Pipa. A pear-shaped plucked stringed instrument. The whole, except the peg-box and tail-piece, of light brown wood. The neck with a facing forming four arched frets. The body with seventeen thin wood frets. The neck with a peg-box for four pegs, almost at right angles and curved forward. The head missing. The pegs of dark wood nearly cylindrical and with spiral ivory handles. The tail-piece of darker wood with mother-of-pearl eyelets. Two inscriptions in Chinese on ivory tablets. A large flaw in the wood of the back. Tail-piece attached by a pair of screw. Lacks two pegs, all strings, and all but four thin wooden frets. Two splits in table. Made before 1873.
