Christian Zell

Christian Zell was a harpsichord maker active in Hamburg during the first half of the eighteenth century. No direct record gives his year of birth. It is estimated at around 1683, based on the burial entry in the parish register of St Jacobi, which states that he was 79 and a half years old at his death and was buried on 13 April 1763. According to Krickeberg and Rase, he may have been a pupil of Michael Mietke.

His documented presence in Hamburg begins in 1722, when he appears in the city's register of citizens. That same year he married the widow of the harpsichord maker Carl Conrad(t) Fleischer, and took over her late husband's workshop, which stood near the former opera house on the Gänsemarkt. The couple had three children, all of whose godparents came from Hamburg families of musicians. He is not believed to have been related to the painter Gottfried Zell.

Three harpsichords signed or dated by him survive: one of 1728 in the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, another of 1737 in the Museu de la Música in Barcelona, and a third of 1741 in the Steinhaus Museum in Bunde. A harpsichord lid decorated with scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses is now tentatively attributed to him, as it may also have come from the workshops of Hieronymus Albrecht Hass or his son Johann Adolph.

His instruments were prized for their lacquered decoration, in the Hamburg style of chinoiserie, and above all for their sound, which was so esteemed that makers and performers came to examine the 1728 instrument.