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In 1997, life member James Stevenson gave the Festival
permanent use of a two-manual harpsichord, built by his brother
Mark Stevenson. He brought Maggie Cole from England to play the
first Mallorcan concerts on the instrument, and she returned a
year later to play Bach´s Goldberg Variations around the island.
Mark Stevenson 
was born in Cambridge in 1943 and began
building harpsichords while he was reading for a degree in Fine
Arts at that university. After graduating, he lectured part time
at various London colleges, but in 1972, he gave this up to
concentrate on instrument making. This harpsichord made available
to the Deià Festival is a copy of an original French instrument
by an unidentified maker, which resides int he Villa Medici,
Rome. Mark Stevenson restored the original for the French
government in 1978. The instrument is of light construction in
the Franco-Flemish tradition and is decorated with trompe
l'oeilmarble panels on the exterior and block printed
arabesque papers on the interior. It was probably made in
northern France at the end of the seventeenth century but sold as
a genuine Ruckers. This was common practice at the time, and to
some extent accounts for the dearth of signed French instruments
of the period. The instrument is thus an English-made
reproduction of a French period imitation of a Flemish
instrument, the original of which is in Italy, and the copy of
which is now in Spain!
The traditional motto inside the lid DVM VIXI TACVI-MORTVA
DVLCE CANTO is an epitaph for the tree used in the construction
and translates: "In Life I was silent, in Death I sweetly
sing."
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