Violin, viola and cello, London, 1785.
Joseph Merlin may be most famous for the ingenious silver swan that survives at the Bowes Museum in Castle Barnard, County Durham. He invented the roller skates, and debuted them whilst showing off improvements he had made to a violin of his own design, though he omitted to invent brakes for his skates, and careened into a plate-glass mirror, smashing it, his violin and a good deal of himself. I’ve been delighted to collaborate with the Bowes museum to assemble a violin, viola and cello for their 2023 exhibition on the life of Merlin.
Connoissership at Oxford University.
For the academic world there are deep problems that arise from historic artefacts that are untethered from a record of provenance, and the violin is
