Violin ID please ladies and Gents.

[Dom40]

[Dom40]

[Dom40]

Pages got mixed up sorry they wouldn’t load.

[Delabo]

22 minutes ago, jacobsaunders said:

That was Dietrich Kessler, but he has sadly passed away

Was he a friend of your father ?

And if he was, did you know him ?

[PhilipKT]

6 minutes ago, Dom40 said:

Pages got mixed up sorry they wouldn’t load.

Is that from the Morris book? I am not near mine, so I cannot check, but that is my favorite reference book. He wrote with such charm and love and came across like such a wonderful person. I love that book.

[jacobsaunders]

12 minutes ago, Delabo said:

Was he a friend of your father ?

And if he was, did you know him ?

 

Yes, a good friend of my father, he was the person who arranged for me to go to the Kantonale Geigenbauschule in Brienz

[Dom40]

13 minutes ago, PhilipKT said:

Is that from the Morris book? I am not near mine, so I cannot check, but that is my favorite reference book. He wrote with such charm and love and came across like such a wonderful person. I love that book.

Yes it is. I agree he was a very passionate Welshman. 

[hendrik]

9 hours ago, martin swan said:

I think they are strikingly similar - edgework, corners, button, purfling. Both have the same rather comical "mistake" where the bottom corner on the bass side takes a steeper upward turn than on the treble side  ...

Still it would be nice to see the front on those 2 violins, particularly the ffs.

[JohnCockburn]

I'm confused. Do you also own the bird's eye maple one? 

 

[jacobsaunders]

The trouble with the Meredeith-Morris book, is that he could wax lyrical about some amateur with whom he was personal friends for pages. It would be the same if Readers Digest would do a long description of a Burgess with his four motor bike trophies. These novels do not provide any technical details of any use to any modern violin “expert” trying to work out if a given violin is one of this make or not. One can glean from the Victorian essay, that Heaton was an autodidact with a woodworking background. Therefore, should this autodidact have produced instruments which display a clear Markneukirchen working tradition, then you can assume that it isn’t one, since he wasn’t there. Far more, one would rightly expect a list of idiosyncrasies, normal to a woodworker who had worked out how to make a violin himself. On the subject of expertise, I am not aware that anybody ever anywhere has ever made a point of studying turn of the century (19^th to 20^th) Yorkshire violins, so one will have to do it ones self, and in order to make progress there, one will need a small collection of “Heaton’s”, and will need to work out if he “used” working techniques of any specific know school (of which he wasn’t party) or not. The other big drawback of the Meredith-Morris book is that it has no end of label illustrations, of which the Hungarian gypsies make ample use. Snipping them out and glueing them in all sorts of stuff. After all, should they slap a “Heaton” on the table, who the hell will be able to judge.

[Dom40]

Love my new camera just the right size for f holes. I get the certificate tomorrow. Stamped Heaton on the blocks 

[JohnCockburn]

where did the photo of the birdseye one come from?

One just like this comes into my workshop from time to time.

 

[Guido]

54 minutes ago, Dom40 said:

Love my new camera just the right size for f holes. I get the certificate tomorrow. Stamped Heaton on the blocks 

I've got one of those cameras, but a cheap one form a few years ago. My pics are much more blurry. Would you share which exact model camera you got there and where one can get it? Those pictures are better than most I've seen.

[matesic]

Me too! I'd love to get confirmation that my 1809-dated violin is signed under the table by Charles Harris, as reported on the last occasion it was opened up in 1930 by George W. Hudson

[Dom40]

You probably won’t believe this my brother made me it. He’s an electrical engineer. 

[matesic]

Shucks! Maybe I should try inserting a second LED to increase the illumination

[JohnCockburn]

46 minutes ago, matesic said:

Me too! I'd love to get confirmation that my 1809-dated violin is signed under the table by Charles Harris, as reported on the last occasion it was opened up in 1930 by George W. Hudson

dental mirror? or even just look into endpin hole?

[matesic]

My local luthier put his endoscope through the endpin hole and saw script beneath the table but couldn't read it. Obviously the oblique angle is the main problem, but maybe with the addition of some fairy lights..?

[Dom40]

.

[sospiri]

5 minutes ago, Dom40 said:

 

 

Will tha flog it or keep it fer thisen?

[jacobsaunders]

Did Ben say if he had ever seen a Heaton before in his whole life? There is a lot of "Suggestion" in his text

[Dom40]

18 minutes ago, sospiri said:

Will tha flog it or keep it fer thisen?

Hey up Chuck tha will sell it! 

[Ben Hebbert]

2 hours ago, jacobsaunders said:

Did Ben say if he had ever seen a Heaton before in his whole life? There is a lot of "Suggestion" in his text

I've seen several. Most of the time they have little quirky relief carvings embellishing them, you see scrolls where the turn over the back is broadened, and others where the back below the button forms into a kind of triangle.. really lovely work, and probably the kind of tasteful embellishments that your father would approve of having seen the beautiful way he finished the back of his scrolls. The soundholes really never change, and there's an awful lot that is familiar to my eyes. I think what you can't see is the really pinched Amati-like arching. I had a Camilli in my hands very recently, and it really leapt out as trying to do the same. 







 

[jacobsaunders]

I'm the first to admit that I have nevr seen one

[Ben Hebbert]

13 minutes ago, jacobsaunders said:

I'm the first to admit that I have nevr seen one

I lived a while in Leeds, once when I was very very little, and then when I was studying for my masters. That's left me with a sincere interest in the Leeds making crowd... Here's a couple that I have photos of that I have also seen properly. There's much more in common than not, though he clearly turns a bit of a corner in his style, abandoning the very pleasant decorative elements on this one. 

At the same time, I don't think we can underrate the influence of German imported instruments to England and how they must have influenced didactic makers because these are the ones they got to pull apart and gather ideas from, so I am less phased to see Germanic traits in English interiors, just as some English makers just bought Mirecourt rib garlands to save the bother of doing it themselves, so I quite respect your point of view