With irony, chagrin and shame in equal measure, my lecture for the French Association des Luthiers & Archetiers Pour Les Development de la Facture Instrumentale was titled Life Before Brexit, a celebration of hundreds of years of co-prosperity between England and France in the violin trade. I even argued successfully that Jean Baptiste Vuillaume should be claimed as an English violin dealer – but only whilst France was in the turmoil of the Paris Commune.
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
