Could this be a Stradivari neck?

[Bruce Tai]

The Medici viola was made in 1690. Seems highly unlikely to me that it was altered before 1700.

 

I would also assume that more Stradivari necks should have been preserved by restorers.

 

"Could the nail last 50 years without rusting?"

Yes, I think it could, given the right treatment. But maybe the rusting was a part of the plan to make it hold stronger, as Bruce Carlson have suggested. I wonder what the black stuff in the Harrison is? Rust is red, not black? This was recently discussed in another thread.

 

 

I would think so. It looks quite similar to the neck itself.

Edit: Oh, sorry, I thought that you meant the glued piece on the neck. But you mean the wedge fingerboard? I think the wedge were usually made from a lighter wood.

 

Yes, I mean the wedge of wood attached to the ivory, partially painted black. I wonder what wood that is.  

[Piergiuseppe]

Yes, I mean the wedge of wood attached to the ivory, partially painted black. I wonder what wood that is.  

 

 

It was usually willow...

[Ben Hebbert]

Ben, you're saying this is the hot spot right here? 

other way around buddy for the good stuff! I wouldn't rule out good stuff on the heel and the underside just there - good UV analysis and searching for the 'tarnish layer' will say a lot!  

[Ben Hebbert]

Both the Stradivari fingerboard in Cremona and the one from the Lady Blunt, and the fittings still on the Medici are of the same kind of maple as the neck, and are put on before the varnishing process, so that the maple sides get a full dose of varnish. There are one or two other bits and pieces - I've seen a cello tailpiece which all follow the same idea. This present fingerboard - regardless of the scrimshaw work is inconsistent with this, because of their choice of wood and the choice to stain it black on the sides. 

 

Luccia, who ever he was, may simply have been proud of his amateur work in fixing up an old Strad, and used the "Fecit" in a way improperly to indicate a job that gave him reason to be proud. Nonetheless, you have to do more to convince me that the fingerboard was retained with the violin after the very fine 19/20th century restorations to the neck! At best, the violin had probably already been in a modern 19th century setup before the decision was made to replace the neck entirely - with these rather bizarre fittings knocking around as a memento of an earlier stage in production. 

[Ben Hebbert]

Stewart Pollens' article, which later became a section of his book, nicely answers your question. 

According to him, first, there are no surviving violin neck patterns from Stradivari.

There are only 7 surviving necks mounted on instruments when Hills made a survey around 1900.

 

 

It's worth taking a look at Goodkind's 'How Many Strads' as sadly, you'll discover that between the time that these were photographed and now, a significant number of instruments finally said goodbye to their original necks. Given that the firms which did these are now dissolved - W.E. Hill & Sons, Jacques Francais, Wurlitzer, Hamma, etc. its likely that much ephemera has simply become lost in time. The Hills did not know of every Strad, and the nuance of the book (although mostly lost) is that it reflects what they knew of, and not a reflection of the things they could not have possibly seen. 

 

 

 

The Medici viola has a complete service record going back to 1700, and yet there is no mention of its heel extension by inserting wood wedges. Pollens can only assume this was done very early on, perhaps before 1700. 

 

 

On the account of Scarampella in 1877 there is a large patch in the belly (possibly the worlds first acoustic patch) with the inscription 'Correto da me Antonius Stradivarius' written over it. The supposition that Stradivari would mix latin and Italian in the space of a 5 word sentence has me more than a little suspicious... but there is every possibility that this isn't as sinister as the worst case scenario would suggest. 

 

I assume the extension is similar to the work on Harrison Strad (picture of its neck hill)

If you look closely at my pictures, there is also neck heel extension, so this could have been done very early on, perhaps when the nail hols were filled. Could the nail last 50 years without rusting? 

 

 

 

That is the standard method of turning an original neck into a modern neck, as you see on the Soil neck, and the others mentioned previously. 

 

There is no single Stradivari VIOLIN as far as I know with a perfectly preserved and untouched original neck. 

[romberg flat]

Luccia, who ever he was, may simply have been proud of his amateur work in fixing up an old Strad, and used the "Fecit" in a way improperly to indicate a job that gave him reason to be proud. Nonetheless, you have to do more to convince me that the fingerboard was retained with the violin after the very fine 19/20th century restorations to the neck! At best, the violin had probably already been in a modern 19th century setup before the decision was made to replace the neck entirely - with these rather bizarre fittings knocking around as a memento of an earlier stage in production. 

 

That's exactly what I thought and wrote using my bad English and my amateurish logic and reasoning. Most likely the violin got modern set-up together with ivory fittings while was in possession of Neapolitan Count (BTW, doesn’t birds motif on fingerboard somehow recalls Neapolitan ceramic tiles ornamentation?) and was sold in 1896 as such.

But I doubt that instrument had remained the same when left next owners (either Hamma or Hills) workshop.

Whether De Luccia (?) replaced also the neck or not, remains yet to be proved, but the chances he didn't, as seems are not so bad.     

[Bruce Tai]

Luccia, who ever he was, may simply have been proud of his amateur work in fixing up an old Strad, and used the "Fecit" in a way improperly to indicate a job that gave him reason to be proud. Nonetheless, you have to do more to convince me that the fingerboard was retained with the violin after the very fine 19/20th century restorations to the neck! At best, the violin had probably already been in a modern 19th century setup before the decision was made to replace the neck entirely - with these rather bizarre fittings knocking around as a memento of an earlier stage in production. 

 

I never anticipated the wood glue to the ivory fingerboard to be original. Could it be so?

I just wonder if it is old maple wood which can be dated by radiocarbon dating (~30 year accuracy?) and I can study its hemicelluose degradation compared to other Strad mape shavings. 

Since this could be willow or lighter wood, I need to make sure. If it is not maple, I will not send it for analysis.

[Dwight Brown]

18th Century rifles from Europe would probably not have used maple as the wood for the stock.  American rifles of the same period would have, but it would have been another species.  European rifles and other firearms would have used walnut, beech or another hardwood.  But it is still a good idea.

 

dlb

[Ben Hebbert]

Bruce, 

 

There is a kind of paradox here in my mind.  - presuming, as I do, that this is genuine, we have a beautiful piece of maple selected by Stradivari to go into one of his violins - a sample that is not only "priceless" but, because it is no longer part of a violin, its something that could be used for scientific analysis of various kinds that would be impossible for a valuable genuine instrument. 

 

My problem is that I really don't know what experiments of this sort would yield interesting data for violin makers to use in order to understand Stradivari's work better. I can think of countless things that scientists - naming no names, I don't need to - could 'achieve' by pointing the latest machine at your sample, and probably get the next 15 min of fame on the media airwaves. But I wonder if this community can put forward questions that your very valuable sample would be able to answer. 

 

I have a similar problem - I have access to a solid sample of Venice Turpentine that was collected around 1700 as part of a cabinet of curiosities. Analysis of small samples by such methods as gas chromatography might yield results, or even demonstrate why it is different from Venice Turpentine of today, but I am yet to find a valid research question that would justify subjecting samples of this to destructive testing. It is, nevertheless a very interesting talking point in terms of the obsession with varnish. The industrial process of producing this is completely different from 17th century methods of production. There is always the potential that it's current state means that it simply no longer holds information that would be of value. 

[Violadamore]

18th Century rifles from Europe would probably not have used maple as the wood for the stock.  American rifles of the same period would have, but it would have been another species.  European rifles and other firearms would have used walnut, beech or another hardwood.  But it is still a good idea.

 

dlb

http://www.gundersonmilitaria.com/gunfowlerc1780GmGcc072.html  Ketland's, London, 1780's, converted much later to percussion (sorta like a neck change ) Original stock.  Zoom the close-up. 

[Bruce Tai]

Ben, there are many important questions to be asked with regard to the wood. 

 

1. Is Strad and del Gesu maple really heavily degraded as indicated in Nagyvary's 2006 paper? We would guess not, if those violins are still making decent sound.

2. Nagyvary also found boron and unusual elements in Strad and del Gseu maple. Do they sit around as boring mineral crystals or do they do something in the wood?  

3. How has cellulose changed in its crystallinity?

4. Do we have definitive proof of wood treatment in any way? In which way?

 

Since our experiments are under way, I can tell you that these are not theoretical questions. We know the following methods are giving us new insights: 

1. Analysis by 13C NMR

2. Elemental analysis by ICP-MS. And solid state NMR of specific elements.

3. Synchrotron X-ray diffraction

4. Combine the data above

 

Wood authentication is done by radiocarbon dating if we have enough material. 

 

Not to mention our planned research on spruce will be even more important. 

 

Other tools we have not used but worth considering in the future: SEM, TEM, Raman and IR spectra

 

Analysis of resins is a specialized area studied by many European museums and labs. Your question about Venice turpentine may be best answered by local experts, perhaps in the National Gallery in London, and also J. P. Echard at Cite de la Musique. Echard may use it as a standard instead of new Venice turpentine, I suppose, in his future rounds of varnish analysis.   

[romberg flat]

Bruce, maybe I am wrong but from your questions about the sort of the wood, could be understood that you are interested and want to examine the wooden part of the fingerboard, not the neck. It was you who wrote that not anticipate the wood glued to ivory fingerboard original.

As it seems pretty obvious that this wood came together with ivory in an act of redecoration and modernization (i.e. increasing neck angle), most likely done in 19^th century, what new insights results of such examination may bring?

  

[Bruce Tai]

 

Bruce, maybe I am wrong but from your questions about the sort of the wood, could be understood that you are interested and want to examine the wooden part of the fingerboard, not the neck. It was you who wrote that not anticipate the wood glued to ivory fingerboard original.

 

As it seems pretty obvious that this wood came together with ivory in an act of redecoration and modernization (i.e. increasing neck angle), most likely done in 19^th century, what new insights results of such examination may bring?

 

  

 

 

We are interested in Stradivari's maple, and any old maple that's not Stradivari. Non-Strad old maple are good control samples for comparison to the Strads. Hemicellulose degradation is 5% per 50 years, so it would be nice to compare if there is unusual degradation in Strads.  

[Ben Hebbert]

I hope you don't find it offensive if I ask blunt questions about your methodology.  

 

May I - respectfully - ask what the point of radio carbon dating is, since it is a destructive method. 

 

If you are studying major 18th century makers, surely it is more important to go by traditional expertise with the caveat of rejecting (or treating differently) instruments whose results indicate an anomaly. As far as I understand it, radio carbon dating is destructive and too broad in it's date range to necessarily be useful. Moreover, you are - hypothetically at least - likely to get anomalous results from 300-year-old violins posing as Cremonese or later fakes made from old wood. Moreover it is surely unscientific to become dependant on a method that can only be applied to a small proportion of the samples.  

 

At the risk of being offensively critical - "radiocarbon dating is a populist technique that is useful for capturing the imagination of journalists, and has nothing to do with real violin science." 

 

You haven't talked about dendrochronology - arguably you could determine through forensic analysis an all round varnish match, and all other elements indicating that the spruce belly is original to the instrument, and you could use the spruce dendrochronology result as a relative indicator of authenticity and age. If the caveats were well expressed in your methodology, I would argue that it would give you a generally accurate picture and would be more ethical and overall more reliable as a working matrix of data than the rather nebulous results that come from radiocarbon dating. 

 

I'm curious about your overall sample - for example Grissino Meyer's mini ice age theory can be easily challenged by the point that other instruments made by other makers from the same period don't have any of the properties of Stradivari. Over numerous scientific studies there has simply been a lack of any kind of control. 

[Violadamore]

I hope you don't find it offensive if I ask blunt questions about your methodology.

 

May I - respectfully - ask what the point of radio carbon dating is, since it is a destructive method. 

 

If you are studying major 18th century makers, surely it is more important to go by traditional expertise with the caveat of rejecting (or treating differently) instruments whose results indicate an anomaly. As far as I understand it, radio carbon dating is destructive and too broad in it's date range to necessarily be useful. Moreover, you are - hypothetically at least - likely to get anomalous results from 300-year-old violins posing as Cremonese or later fakes made from old wood. Moreover it is surely unscientific to become dependant on a method that can only be applied to a small proportion of the samples.  

 

At the risk of being offensively critical - "radiocarbon dating is a populist technique that is useful for capturing the imagination of journalists, and has nothing to do with real violin science." 

 

You haven't talked about dendrochronology - arguably you could determine through forensic analysis an all round varnish match, and all other elements indicating that the spruce belly is original to the instrument, and you could use the spruce dendrochronology result as a relative indicator of authenticity and age. If the caveats were well expressed in your methodology, I would argue that it would give you a generally accurate picture and would be more ethical and overall more reliable as a working matrix of data than the rather nebulous results that come from radiocarbon dating. 

 

I'm curious about your overall sample - for example Grissino Meyer's mini ice age theory can be easily challenged by the point that other instruments made by other makers from the same period don't have any of the properties of Stradivari. Over numerous scientific studies there has simply been a lack of any kind of control. 

Ben, modern radiocarbon dating uses accelerator mass spectrometry rather than beta counting in situations such as violins, and only requires milligrams rather than grams of sample.  It's also quite accurate when properly calibrated. 

 

BTW, what have you got against populism? 

[Bruce Tai]

Violadamore is right, our university has a new $3M USD mass spectrometer for 14C dating. I have been told that 300 year old objects can be dated with 20-year error margin, sacrificing just 10 mg of sample. The technical details are not so simple though. I thought Baroque objects are too recent to be accurately dated by 14C, but my geologist colleague told me to go ahead because of improved instrumentation these days.

 

When I am given a little plastic bag of wood shaving with a note saying Strad cello or del Gesu violin, it is impossible/impolite/inappropriate to ask for further information. So I find it prudent to take 10 mg  of wood shaving to measure 14C ratio. 14C/12C ratio can be measured accurately, just like tree ring width, but translating 14C ratio or ring width to the correct year is not always easy. I understand the pitfalls of authenticity, contamination, and sampling issues. Either we can wait another 100 years to look into the wood, or we can try with today's best technology. As a hypothetical example, if 4 out of 5 Strads have one unnatural element shooting through the roof, our analysis would catch it. If we find some consistent chemical surprises from multiple sample sources, we may be on the right track, but we can never be 100% sure. This is forensic archaeology, peeping into Stradivari's working methods. We can never get the full picture. 

 

The little ice age theory makes no sense, for me at least. If the weather is colder, tree ring would be narrower. Cremonese makers choose spruce with medium ring width, not tight ones. Recent CT studies (I need to look up the papers) have shown that Strad tops have normal density for spruce with similar ring width. At each Alpine valley spruce would be growing at different temperatures. We do not need to wait for little ice age to cut spruce growing at colder spots, but anyway Cremonese did not use spruce that grew slowly like Jacob Stainer did. Please correct me if I am wrong about this.

 

Did little ice age affect the maple used by Stradivari then? I think not because he used maple from different sources (local and Balkan) and probably from different species (basically indistinguishable as cut timber). One is free to choose a maple tree from a colder spot or a hotter spot, without waiting for 300 years for Europe to cool down by 2 degrees on average. One is always free to choose denser maple for tonewood, and there appears to be no indication that Stradivari did that. 

 

If our study proves to be insightful, some restorers and instrument owners may consider saving Cremonese wood shavings during well documented repairs, kind of like how archaeological excavations are done these days. I think it is the burden of the scientist to first prove that wood analysis is useful, and then others may join in if they are intrigued. Disproving any overt wood treatment by Stradivari would be an advance as well. 

[Violadamore]

[M]y geologist colleague told me to go ahead because of improved instrumentation these days.

 

..........if 4 out of 5 Strads have one unnatural element shooting through the roof...............

Glad to see you're getting excellent advice.   

 

Unnatural??  Oh goody!  Pu, Np, Tc, something 100 and up, or what?  Oh, of course, Californium.......   [Runs for cover before she can be pelted with dirty glassware or something]

 

More seriously, I find your research promising and impressive.  Thank you much for sharing your information here. 

[Ben Hebbert]

The new accuracy of Carbon14 dating sounds an awful lot more interesting than previous tests. I'm sold  (well, almost..) 

 

It was once explained to me about destructive testing, that it would look terribly bad for a Stradivari in purportedly very good condition, if bits of it were evidently absent because of their sacrifice to an experiment, and certainly my mind is very much that - given some of the science out there - I am still very circumspect about any experiment which is built up around the ability to zap a Strad with the latest gizmo. Scientists who start with a specific research question and apply the necessary science to it are in the minority at the moment. 

 

To answer Violadamore's question - what's wrong with populism? - I'm cite just about every newspaper article where a press department has got excited because some boffin has thumped a Strad with their new toy and pronounced on why Stradivari is best! There was even a huge response in the press when some Swedish university announced it was starting a research group 10 years ago to discover the secrets of Stradivari. All the world ever got from that was one press release, and yet, the populist nature of Strad is that it got column inches all over the European press, without - as far as I am aware - them even picking up a violin or working out what to do with it. 

[David Burgess]

 

It was once explained to me about destructive testing, that it would look terribly bad for a Stradivari in purportedly very good condition, if bits of it were evidently absent because of their sacrifice to an experiment, and certainly my mind is very much that

Ben, I think everybody agrees with that. What would you think about such testing being done on things like shavings which were already removed during repair? Or an already removed Stradivari neck (if it is one)?

 

So many things about treatment of Stradivari wood have been proposed or claimed, that I welcome a fresh look from someone who's up on the latest techniques and equipment. Same with varnish.

 

I wonder if there's a way to differentiate between wood which was deliberately degraded for the purpose of making, and wood which degraded after it became a violin, from exposure to bad environments, such as those high in moisture (mold, fungi etc)?

[Ben Hebbert]

David, 

 

I don't think my voice counts for anything - I'll simply play devils advocate and outline the problem as I understand it.

 

Like you, it's a frustration that shavings which are necessarily taken out of instruments are not preserved for the purpose of research. Even at times when we haven't known what that research might be, it nevertheless stands to reason that research techniques may develop in time which could give us useful insights into things. 

 

The problem arises however, when we are dealing with purchasers of instruments whose significant motivation is investment. If, for example, I sold the Lady Blunt to an investor this year, on the basis that it was in near perfect condition, and in two years time - unbeknown to me - a major scientific breakthrough was announced, using samples removed from the violin 20 years ago, the investor - and more specifically his lawyers - may decide that the public knowledge that bits have been removed means that I sold less than 100% of what I claimed to. They may claim that the instrument's value is damaged by the disclosure that material was removed from it, and it is quite conceivable that a judge would be swayed by those arguments. 

 

To me, the answer would be a kind of agreement between various museums - if we take the safely-off-the-market instruments in the Library of Congress, National Music Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musee de la Musique, the Strad in Berlin, Royal Academy, Ashmolean, Cremona, Rome, Florence, Chi-Mei, Nippon Foundation, Austrian National Bank, and others, there could well be a criteria under which samples could be taken of certain instruments. The result is that if there are sufficient possibilities for sampling Strads, it would normalise perception of this, and after that it would be much more normal to take samples from privately owned instruments. 

 

The fact of the matter is, of course, that shavings have been taken from Strads for years, and most of these have pretty much ended in the dustbin. With instruments with invasive sound post patches or button grafts and other obvious invasive restorations, it should be obvious that there has to be missing wood so there should be no implication on the market. Unfortunately many of the rich people who can afford to buy these instruments simply don't see it that way, and the dealers who supply them are - understandably - nervous. 

[Bruce Tai]

David, 

 

I don't think my voice counts for anything - I'll simply play devils advocate and outline the problem as I understand it.

 

Like you, it's a frustration that shavings which are necessarily taken out of instruments are not preserved for the purpose of research. Even at times when we haven't known what that research might be, it nevertheless stands to reason that research techniques may develop in time which could give us useful insights into things. 

 

The problem arises however, when we are dealing with purchasers of instruments whose significant motivation is investment. If, for example, I sold the Lady Blunt to an investor this year, on the basis that it was in near perfect condition, and in two years time - unbeknown to me - a major scientific breakthrough was announced, using samples removed from the violin 20 years ago, the investor - and more specifically his lawyers - may decide that the public knowledge that bits have been removed means that I sold less than 100% of what I claimed to. They may claim that the instrument's value is damaged by the disclosure that material was removed from it, and it is quite conceivable that a judge would be swayed by those arguments. 

 

To me, the answer would be a kind of agreement between various museums - if we take the safely-off-the-market instruments in the Library of Congress, National Music Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musee de la Musique, the Strad in Berlin, Royal Academy, Ashmolean, Cremona, Rome, Florence, Chi-Mei, Nippon Foundation, Austrian National Bank, and others, there could well be a criteria under which samples could be taken of certain instruments. The result is that if there are sufficient possibilities for sampling Strads, it would normalise perception of this, and after that it would be much more normal to take samples from privately owned instruments. 

 

The fact of the matter is, of course, that shavings have been taken from Strads for years, and most of these have pretty much ended in the dustbin. With instruments with invasive sound post patches or button grafts and other obvious invasive restorations, it should be obvious that there has to be missing wood so there should be no implication on the market. Unfortunately many of the rich people who can afford to buy these instruments simply don't see it that way, and the dealers who supply them are - understandably - nervous. 

 

The interest of the client has to be high on the priority list because this is a serious business. In all honesty, without these rich clients investing in Cremonese violins since 15th century, we would have few Strads left to play, let alone do research on. I think researchers need to be very sensitive about the commercial side of things and not to undermine anyone's interest.  

 

On the other hand, since the violin business is shrouded in a certain degree of discreetness, and there are so few opportunities to study Stradivari violins, researchers easily get over-excited about their pet theories. In most cases, we only see fanciful theories and 15 minutes of of fame, far detached from the reality of violin making. I agree with Ben that this is actually quite foolish and distracting.

 

I often explain why the violin business has to be discreet about certain things to my scientist friends, and they quickly become fascinated about how a bother/sister-hood of unrelated individuals can work together to preserve the culture of Cremonese violins for several centuries. I would like to believe that preservation, research , and education can go hand-in-hand to continuously enrich our culture via antique Cremonese violins, and that greater violin making lies in front of us, not behind us.