DHV:
1604
Tourin ID:
Size:
Bass
Place Made:
Maker:
Date:
18..
Label Text:
Body Shape:
Viol
Current Location:
D
Bombach
No. of Strings:
6+6
Collection:
Private Collection
Sound Holes:
Flame
Catalog Number:
Head:
Female
Private Owner:
Yes
Previous Owner:
[an estate in southern Germany, -2010]
Measurements:
Body Length:
74
String Length:
67
Rib Depth:
12
Upper Width:
36.5
Middle Width:
22
Bottom Width:
44
Information
Source:
Owner’s website, and owner to TGM, 1/13
Literature:
Owner’s website; Weber 2016
Photographs:
On owner’s website (front 7/8 from below, C-bouts 7/8, head 7/8 [color]); Weber 2016, pp. 140-41 (front, head front, treble soundhole, details of bridge and tuning/hitch-pins for sympathetic strings [color]; also from owner 1/13)
Recordings:
Auctions:
Comments:
Acquired July 2010, restored by Mathias Behrle, Freiburg (back was badly damaged). “Antonio Cassini 1694” written on the back but surely incorrect; more likely 19th-C Bohemian work (cf. Elsler or Hulinsky), according to K. Martius. (But dendrochronological report by Willy Tegel (2010) says youngest growth ring in table is 1684, using wood from northwest Bohemia rather than Alps: composite instrument?) Owner calls it a “viola da gamba d’amore” and claims it’s the only such currently in playable condition. Both table and back are only lightly arched; no evidence it ever had frets, and very few signs of use; found with all 6 bowed strings of unwound gut, and restrung the same way after restoration. Harpsichord-style tuning pins for sympathetic strings at bottom block, with hitchpins just inside pegbox, above nut.