The earliest dated American stringed instrument. Robert Horne was active on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean during different times in his career as an instrument maker and wholesaler, however this instrument labelled “Made by Rob[er]t Horne, New York, 1757” is made of American woods, confirming everything that is said on the label. Perhaps more interesting is that it is a viola and not a violin, because this implies the intention of chamber music performance at the time it was

George Patten’s preparatory work, 1832. George Patten’s 1832 portrait was remarked upon by Achille Paganini as the most lifelike depiction of his father. The portrait remained the property of the artist all his life before being purchased by W.E. Hill & Sons, and Paganini was so taken with it that he begged a copy that now survives in Genoa.When this came up I was surprised to see that other derivative copies did not exist. There are a number of questions

Bronze statuette of Antonio Stradivari, London, 1894. The brothers William, Alfred and Charles Voller were all capable artists beyond their work as violin makers, and we have watercolour paintings in our archives by each of the three brothers, however William was the most capable artist. A number of still-life paintings, invariably of violin-related subjects survive by him, and as a sculptor he produced a portrait bust in bronze of the cellist Alfredo Piatti and another of Stradivari based on the

A tenor viola, Absam, 1660. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has three Stradivari violins, good cellos but hitherto no violas of any note to form a string quartet for performance within the museum setting. By finding a suitable viola to fill their requirement it has transformed the musical potential of their playing collection. Jacob Stainer is the most significant violin maker working outside of Italy contemporaneous to the golden-period of Cremonese violin making. This is one of the finest and

The Bowes Museum In 2023 the Bowes Museum held a landmark exhibition centred around their most iconic object, the life-sized automaton silver swan made by the “ingenious mechanick” John Joseph Merlin. His inventiveness was legendary in the late eighteenth-century, and directly inspired Charles Babbage’s invention of the ‘difference engine’ celebrated as the first computer. Amongst Merlin’s other inventions were the roller skates, which he debuted whilst playing a violin of his own making, ending with such famously predictable results that