J-G

I imagine a darker background would help. Your camera sets exposure for a white scene, and underexposes the dark stick. Quite common in bow photos here. Focus is good though.

Nice looking violin. Thanks for posting good clear photos!

Left Hill's in 1961, died in 1990. http://www.hillbows.com/the-makers/arthur-bultitude

Agreed; you need advice and help from a player, a teacher, or a repair person. Also, many shops that sell student violins also rent them. That's usually the best way to start.

And another option: many fine Indian players brace the instrument between the chest and the right foot.

I think something along those lines was discussed here: https://www.fiddlehangout.com/topic/50102

As Cole Porter advised, "Do do that poo poo that you do so well!"

A violin, then, if that is your best guess. But can you narrow it down a little? The OP knows it isn't a Vuillaume, and asks what it REALLY is. No need to tell him the bad news, the unavoidable facts, etc.

What the OP would like to get is an authoritative opinion on what the violin IS, not what it ISN'T. That would involve looking at the violin, not the labeling.

If a foreign orchestra is playing in the US using carbon fiber bows, this will be all the justification needed. Confiscations have occurred, and appealing to New York musicians to lend their bows to strangers in the hours before a concert is not the ideal position to put yourself in: https://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/20146/15870/

A little off topic, but I'll raise a question here about labeling laws: I have a "da Salo" model Höfner violin labeled "made in Germany". Höfner was manufacturing in Schönbach (Czechoslovakia) until after World War II. I have assumed my violin is an early Bubenreuth product (1950's), on the assumption that by 1960 or so the labels would have to specify West Germany. Does anyone know when the phrase West Germany became mandatory? (This violin, by the way, was shipped not to the USA but to India.) Thanks for any info.

Actually, the majority are pointless (in both senses).

For what it's worth, builders of flatback mandolins (such as Gibson, etc.) routinely refer to their corner joints as points, so you often hear about two-point and three-point mandolins, etc. Wouldn't expect such talk from Tarisio though.

Oops. That was Rostropovich's cello. So I'm forced to conclude either that the student I heard the story from was confusing two of her teachers, or that Napoleon tried out every cello that came through Paris.

He was one of the last of a great generation (that of Menuhin, Ricci, Starker and so on); we still have Gitlis, who studied with Thibaud in the thirties. Parisot taught many summer workshops at the Banff Centre, along with such distinguished contemporaries as Zoltan Szekely and Lorand Fenyves. I seem to recall a story that the ribs of his cello were marred by marks supposedly made by Napoleon's spurs, when the emperor tried to play it. Probably apocryphal, of course— could have been anyone's spurs.