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I recently acquired an Andreas Amati trade violin from an auction website. It was described on the auction site as a Baroque "Bohemian" violin in need of a repair/restoration. Attached are images of this violin for your perusal. It has a two part Spruce top and two part Maple bottom with Maple sides (see images) Inside the violin is the printed label: "Andreas Amati fecit Cremonae anno 16" I understand that this is obviously a typical label found in a host of trade violins from various sources. What perhaps intrigues me most about this violin is that it is stamped "PARIS" on the button (see first image). Perhaps one or more of the experts out there can indicate if this stamp refers to the name of the maker or to the location as Paris in France, where the trade workshop may have been located. Any other additional information on this particular violin would be helpful. A value estimate based on a full restoration and setup would also be appreciated, if that is possible. It is obviously in need of some repairs, which I intend to do, but it would be nice to know more about it before I proceed. Thanks in advance for any information you may be able to provide.
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I was a little bit thrilled to discover that the Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments have put this lovely little fiddle into playing order... https://vimeo.com/135052221 Nearly fifteen years ago, I was asked to have a look at an eighteenth-century practice violin on the hopes that it may have been a hundred years older than that. My considered view that the reappraisal was about 100 years out was not intended to boot it back to the nineteenth-century, but to cast it even further into the sixteenth-century. The shape, and the lack of ribs is more common in early iconography than one would first imagine, and the complex shape finds a number of concordances in a surprisingly widespread iconography across northern Italy, and as far as Poland and England, where a significant concentration of iconography seems to exist. A very exciting element of the violin however, was in the decoration, which includes silk-moths (quite anatomically specific) painted into each of the corners. This is the Armorial device of the Bassano family who came from Venice to London in 1538 as instrument makers, musicians, and masters of the science of musick on the invitation of Henry VIII. Another violin which I subsequently discovered (in the corner of a dusty attic of a castle - really!) that is the twin of it has tudor emblemata on the front and back, also providing sixteenth-century dating. A silk-moth stamp is very common in woodwind instruments made by the family in London. In a short time, my study of this will be in print in the British Museum Research Publication 196: The British Museum Citole: New Perspectives. The later front of this 14th century instrument shows the same hand, and is dated to London in 1578. In the meantime, it's fun to listen to an instrument as old as Andrea Amati, and probably one of the only primitive competitors of the modern violin to survive from the sixteenth-century. Enjoy!
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This viola seems very interesting. The NMM does not give the LOB, but another site sets it at 406mm. This would be a great size for a everyday viola for most people. It looks to be in modern set up (give or take) and the NMM states that it has been reduced from a tenor. I wonder if it gets played as they have a complete quartet of Andrea Amati instruments. http://ingleshayday.com/archive/instrument/1-viola-andrea-amati.html http://orgs.usd.edu/nmm/Violas/Amati3370/3370AmatiViola.html DLB
