It's slowly getting a full restoration - I think it's been in pieces now for three years. 400 years of touchup has now been removed, and the little bit of original varnish that's left is spectacular.

As an aside, if anyone thinks that getting something fixed at the Mothership takes time, have a fine violin restored. It's the ultimate test of patience.

That back is amazingly beautiful!  🥰

What's the little dot thingy?

Well... it's interesting. The soundbox looks Brescian school, but the grafted scroll and pegbox looks kinda' Russian or Eastern European. If it was Maggini pattern ordinarily I'd look for the telltale extra turn on the roses, but that ones either been converted or repaired. 

Does it have a label? 

Quote from: pauldo on August 04, 2026, 01:41:04 PMThat back is amazingly beautiful!  🥰

What's the little dot thingy?

The dots at the top and bottom of the back are locator pins, which are a feature originally found on early Cremonese instruments. In that tradition, the violin's rib structure was built around a wooden form, once the ribs were complete, the wood that would become the back would be nailed to the upper and lower blocks inside of the rib structure, then the outline of the ribs would be traced onto that wood. Once removed from the rib structure, the back could be cut out, arched hollowed and purfled. The holes from the nails could then be used to properly position that back (and top) when it was time to glue the corpus up.

The style of this instrument isn't Cremonese, but Brescian. The early Brescians used a different building method; however, there are a number of apparently Brescian instruments that were made by the Rogeri family, who learned their craft in Cremona, relocated to Brescia, and made instruments in the older style using Cremonese methods.

The dots on the scroll are from an ebony dowel that would have been placed through the pegbox to hold the A or D string above one of the lower tuning pegs. This is an alteration that is generally attributed to 18th century German luthiers, but the surviving Amati instruments that Catherine de Medici commissioned in the 1560s (which were made for the court of her son King Charles the IX of France) have remnants of these ebony pegs, so I tend to think that the practice started there and spread to Germany later.

I find all these little details super fascinating.

Quote from: edwardofhuncote on August 04, 2026, 02:00:18 PMWell... it's interesting. The soundbox looks Brescian school, but the grafted scroll and pegbox looks kinda' Russian or Eastern European. If it was Maggini pattern ordinarily I'd look for the telltale extra turn on the roses, but that ones either been converted or repaired.

Does it have a label?

The most well-respected expert who has seen it thinks both are Pietro Giacomo Rogeri, and the scroll certainly looks like a well-worn Rogeri to me.

I'm not fully convinced that they go together. The interior of the sides and back have scorch marks from coals being shaken around inside the corpus, which you see on earlier Brescian instruments. Never having been inside of a double-purfled Rogeri, I can't say whether they did this.

The instrument was retopped by Richard Duke some time around 1740, and had remnants of his label in it.

My buddy and mentor Ward Elliott stops by here on Wednesday evenings to visit and eat popsicles. I'll see what he thinks. About 95% of what I know about fiddles came from him. The rest is just common bull----.

That's a neat fiddle. They all look alike until you really look.

I love them — treacherous beasts, but endlessly interesting.