author
Towry Piper
Known primarily as Sir David Piper, he was a British museum director and art historian who also wrote books under the name Towry Piper. His work ranges from writing on violins and makers to broader books on art and culture.
1 Audiobook
Violin tone and violin makers
by Hidalgo Moya, Towry Piper
About the author
Towry Piper appears to be a name used in connection with Sir David Towry Piper (1918–1990), a British museum curator, writer, and art historian. Reliable sources identify him as director of the National Portrait Gallery, later director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and then director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Alongside his museum career, he wrote extensively. Publisher and library-style sources describe David Piper as an author of art books, and one publisher note says he also published Trial by Battle under the pseudonym Peter Towry, drawing on his Second World War experience as a Japanese prisoner of war.
Because the available sources found here connect “Towry Piper” mainly to David Towry Piper rather than showing it clearly as a separate public pen name, some bibliographic listings may use the shorter form in ways that overlap with his full name. In other words, the evidence supports treating Towry Piper as part of the identity of Sir David Piper rather than as a wholly separate author profile.