It forms part of the Musical Instrument Museums collection of the University of Edinburgh, and is housed in St Cecilia's Hall.

[1] Raymond Russell, a British harpsichordist and organologist, bought his first historic keyboard instrument in 1939.

By 1960 Russell had decided to donate his collection to Edinburgh University, where it was to become the nucleus of a centre for research in keyboard performance practice and organology, but this plan was not completed by the time of his sudden death in Malta in 1964 at the age of forty-one.

[citation needed] The university bought two further instruments from Russell's collection – an English double harpsichord by Jacob Kirckman, bought at auction in 1970, and a French double harpsichord by Jean Goermans and Taskin, purchased from Maud Russell in 1974 – bringing the total number to twenty-one.

[1] The instruments in the collection represent the five principal geographical areas or national schools of harpsichord-making – England, Flanders, France, the German-speaking world and the Italian peninsula – and more than two hundred years of the history of the craft.