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Lecturing at West Dean College, 2017
Bringing original instruments for students to examine is critical to their learning and beyond what colleges are able to offer from their own resources. This lecture trip to West Dean College allowed the students to get close and personal to a viol, viola and violin by Barak Norman all made between 1690 and 1710, as…
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The Newark Trip to Oxford 2023
In October I welcomed the first year from Newark School of Violin Making for a two-day hand’s on visit to the workshop and study at the Ashmolean Museum over the half term break. Unfortunately nobody told their teacher, the great John Wright, who was taking a quiet holiday with his partner in Oxford. Here is…
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Jacobs School of Music
It was good to spend online time with the historically informed practice students of Jacobs School of Music to talk about the hardware of violin history, and how it relates to the bigger world of musical performance. What are the issues of the miriad of different modifications and uses of the violin, what are the…
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Michigan Violin Makers Association
Since I chaired the 2017 Messiah conference for the British Violin Making Association, I have had enormous pleasure in presenting a summary of the conference to numerous audiences including that the Ashmolean museum and annually to students at Newark School of Violin Making. In November 2023, I gave a presentation to the Michigan Violin Makers…
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Brothers Amati
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…
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James D’Aquisto
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…
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The Hill Papers
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…
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Citole at the British Museum
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…
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Josquin des Prez
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…
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Bassano Brothers
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…
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Sofonisba Anguissola
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…
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ANDREA AMATI
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…
