Pictured above is our genuine Stradivarius violin purchased from Sears by my father-in-law in 1913. The year is hand-written on a label printed with the words "Antonius Stradivarius", which is pasted on the inside of the fiddle beneath the F-hole (Quiet in the back!). The instrument is 99 years old.
Another view which shows the carvings on the tailpiece. I believe the chin rest, fingerboard, and tailpiece to be of ebony.
Now for a bit of human interest - my grandson posed with the violin. Yes, I know the positioning of the instrument is not quite right. He's the busybody who snooped around and found the violin in the closet, but I'm glad he did, because I had not seen it for quite a while.
UPDATE with further information on the Sears violins:
This Sears ad reads "A two piece maple back, beautifully flamed, as shown in the illustration. top of resonant spruce, especially selected; reddish brown varnish, beautifully shaded in imitation of an old violin. The neck and scroll are made of curly maple to correspond with the back and sides The fingerboard and tailpiece of solid ebony. Readily retail at $15.00. No finer model in existence than the celebrated Stradivarius. In addition to the violin as above described, we furnish a regular Artists' Tourte model wood bow, german silver trimmed; ebony frog and button; & a solid wood case, American made, handle and lock: a piece of artists' rosin and a full set of four strings and one of out most valuable and complete instruction books."The violins were mass-produced in Germany and Czechoslovakia, but ours appears to be well put together.
Very pretty instrument. I wonder, is grandson a leftie?
ReplyDeleteYou always capture my interest...thanks again. Len/Leonardo
ReplyDeleteRuss, my grandson is not a leftie. I guess he didn't know that the bow should be in the right hand and the fingering done with the left.
ReplyDeleteLen, I was interested to have another look at the old violin. I wonder if it would be a no-no to I use a bit of furniture polish on it.
Your question made me curious, so I went googling for an answer. (I had violin lessons for a year when I was a kid, but it was not the instrument for me.) Unfortunately, answers are all over the place about what to polish with. You can do you own googling, but anything containing oil seems to be a no-no: gets into cracks and changes the tone of the instrument. Which perhaps one day one of your posterity might want to play.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if you're just going to use it for an objet d'art, that's different.
Russ, thanks for looking around. I would not want to affect the tone of the violin. I'll Google to see what I come up with, and I may not do anything at all.
ReplyDeleteThis is not a real strat
ReplyDeleteTell me something I don't know.
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