DHV:
561
Tourin ID:
LIS 08
Size:
Bass
Place Made:
Maker:
GB
London
Edward / Richard II
Lewis / Meares
Date:
1720 C
Label Text:
R[icardus] Meares / [Instrument.] Music. Fabric. in [area] Boreali D. Pauli [a]pud Londinat[es] [handwritten]
Body Shape:
Viol
Current Location:
P
Lisbon
No. of Strings:
-4
Collection:
Museu da Música (formerly Conservatorio Nacional)
Sound Holes:
C
Catalog Number:
MM 5
Head:
Female
Private Owner:
Previous Owner:
Alfred Keil, Lisbon (d. 1907)
Measurements:
Body Length:
67.5
String Length:
Rib Depth:
13
Upper Width:
29
Middle Width:
22
Bottom Width:
33.5
Information
Source:
PT visit 10/78; P. Torres to PT 3/77
Literature:
Hebbert 2003b, p. 45
Photographs:
On museum’s website (back, upper half of F body, S body only, head FB+S, one rib ornament [color]); [by PT: head 3/4 (color)]; [unpublished, from J. Pringle: front 7/8, body only, unstrung]
Recordings:
Auctions:
Comments:
Table and back have double purfling and floral/leaf ornamentation; ribs have geometric designs. Converted to a cello, but keeping original pegbox and head. Hebbert 2003b: incomplete at the time of Lewis’s death in 1717, then bought at his estate sale and completed by Meares II, hence before 1725 (as with the Lewis/Meares at Metropolitan Museum, but Lisbon instrument was more incomplete when Lewis died). Baines 1968, p. 4 (in entry for V&A’s Meares) inexplicably says this instrument is “dated 1637”.