https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2020-07-22/the-mystery-of-a-stolen-rare-cello-has-a-surprise-ending
The image revealed the luthier’s label, visible through one of the curlicued f-holes.
Across it was a note inscribed in the feathery pen of the master himself: Pour la petite Comtesse Marie 1834. “For the little Countess Marie.”
“I could hardly believe it,” she recalled. The cello had been given to her as a child by her father; nearly 40 years earlier, it had been stolen.
Custom-made for the daughter of a French aristocrat two centuries ago, it was a spectacular, rare one-eighth-size cello produced by Bernardel, protégé of Nicolas Lupot, violin maker to King Louis XVIII. Bernardel’s craftsmanship earned him renown as among the finest string instrument makers in France.....