This is a plain fruitwood box. It contains a beautiful and expressive forte piano musical movement and dates from around 1850 give or take. It plays six operatic airs by Donizetti and Bellini.
The box has no decoration save the brass bedplate screws that show in the front and rear of the box and the latches for the top.
Here is the open box showing the tune card, the musical movement the removable winding key and the control levers.
The tune card shows the names and composers of the six airs played on the box.
The rear lever is used to either change the tune on each successive revolution of the cylinder, or to repeat a favorite tune. The middle lever is the start/stop lever. The front lever is an 'instant stop' lever.
In this close-up you can see the two combs on the musical movement. The rightmost comb plays softly while the leftmost comb plays normally (louder than the rightmost comb). This provides a beautifully expressive song when played.
The forte-piano box (also seen as piano-forte) was said to have been invented by Nicole Frères of Geneva around 1840.
