Violoncello Piccolo by the Brothers Amati, c.1620-30, Ex-Amaryllis Fleming. Our extensive forensic condition reporting, provenance research and strategic advice concerning the balance between conservation and performance was pivotal as an independent third-party for the acquisition of the Ex-Amaryllis Fleming Amati for a major international museum. It will form part of a core playing collection where…

Mandolin No.1, for Lydia Merriman, 1971. James D’Aquisto expressed a desire to make more mandolins, but demand for his archtop guitars was too great and he only made three in his lifetime. The first of these, made for Lydia Merriman was too thin on the belly, so he stripped the fittings from it, and used…

The business papers of Henry and Henry William Hill. We recently uncovered and acquired on behalf of a client the enormous and extensive collected papers of Henry and Henry William Hill. The father and son both played a detached role from the family enterprise of W.E. Hill & Son (William Ebsworth Hill was the brother…

Citole, East Anglian, 1280-1330 period. The British Museum citole is represented as the finest example of English medieval decorative woodworking. I was privileged to take part in studies on the instrument, focussing on my expertise in sixteenth-century violin making and its relationship to the belly of the instrument that was added in 1578. With the…

Portrait by the Master of the Countess of Warwick, 1550s. I was asked to examine the musical elements of an English family group portrait painted by the anonymous Master of the Countess of Warwick on behalf of the Weiss Gallery in London. Work with my musicological colleague Kerry McCarthy began with the expectation that the…

Violin by the Bassano Brothers, London c.1575. I was asked to examine a primitive violin catalogued in the Edinburgh University Collection of Historical Musical Instruments as a nineteenth-century mute violin on the possibility it may be from a century earlier, but the object had long been of interest to me, and the opportunity to handle…

Self portrait, Madrid, period 1564-1572 During her lifetime, the Cremonese Sofonisba Anguissola was arguably the third famous artist of the Italian Renaissance after Titian and Michelangelo, and the first female painter to gain significant patronage and recognition Her importance to the violin world, whilst tangential, is of great significance. As a Cremonese contemporary of Andrea…

Violin by Andrea Amati, Cremona c.1575. Andrea Amati is the father of Cremonese violin making with fewer than two dozen known examples of his work extant, but the presence of most of his surviving works on public display in museum collections gives the impression of a much larger body of surviving work. When an example…

Portrait of Nicholas Lanier, London, 1613. Heralded by Sir Roy Strong as the most important discovery in early English portraiture in a century, it was my privilege to examine the painting before and during conservation after its acquisition by the Weiss Gallery in London. The painting became the subject of a scholarly monograph Nicholas Lanier: A…

English cittern, Southwark, circa 1620. The cittern was a mainstay of domestic music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries but remarkably few examples survive. Surprisingly it was the English, rather than the Italians that made the best use of the instrument with highly virtuosic repertoire emerging out of the Elizabethan era. As early as 1618…

Consultation services for a public instrument collection. We provided valuations, and curatorial services for the donation of a musical instrument collection to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, gifted as part of a philanthropic benefaction to the conservatoire that included the funding of the Koerner concert hall. The collection is on display in the…

Bass viol, London, 1677. I had long overlooked this viol described in the 1960s catalogue as a composite and when it was last on display it languished against a wall so that the back was impossible to see, but despite its drawbacks, it was the best fit for the new hanging of the British Galleries…