The Scandal of the Cellist and the Washtub.
In the age of social media, a reproduction of a nineteenth-century image has been doing the rounds that has caused an unexpected reaction in the immediate environment of the Black Lives Matter protests, taken to be a racist trope between an enslaved African-American and a white slave-owner. As a result it has received censure, being […]
Pernambuco: Help save the tree of harmony
Back in 2018, before the pandemic, I attended a meeting in Cremona of many representatives from professional violin and bow making associations around the world with the aim of forming the International Alliance of Violin and Bow Makers for Endangered Species. This was with the aim of discussing threats to our profession from the scarcity […]
Josquin in England: Some additional notes.
Some years ago in 2010, I was invited to examine a Tudor-period English painting by the anonymous Master of the Countess of Warwick, to determine whatever could be said about the keyboard instrument played by one of four children in the family group. Ultimately there was extremely little to be said about it, but the […]
Spoliation and the violin trade: A 21st CENTURY DEALERS VIEW
In 2022, the Philharmonie de Paris hosted a conference on “The spoliation of musical instruments in Europe, 1933-1945”. I was privileged to have been encouraged to take part with the purpose of producing an unbiased view of the trade in musical instruments, where it relates to questions of provenance from before the Second World War. […]
Some British women in the violin-making world, 1550-1750.
This was intended as an article for the 100th Issue of the British Violin Making Association’s Newsletter. However a deep dive into history brought surprisingly fruitful results and it ended up too long and with far too much to cram into the deadline. Instead of breaking it up, here it is for International Women’s Day […]
Violin making in Northern Europe in the time of the Amatis: Part 2
Some years ago I was involved in a project with the British Museum to contextualise their most significant work of medieval wood carving, a citole made in England sometime around 1300, which had been turned into a violin as a gift soaked in metaphor from Queen Elizabeth I to her spurned lover Sir Robert Dudley […]
Violin Making In Northern Europe in the time of the Amatis: Part 1.
VSA Attendees: These TWO blogs are very roughly presented, but outline the substance of the talk I could have given. I look forward to the Q&A on Sunday, where we shall have some fun. Do post me any questions on Whova in the meantime. There was going to be a video… but I hear that […]
Lt. Colonel Joh Stewart and the Jacobite violin-maker
A group of cellos and a viol provide clues that point tantalisingly towards being made for Scottish Jacobite rebels in the early eighteenth century. Benjamin Hebbert explores the risks of provenance and tradition in an area of cultural history fuelled with deeply held romantic notions of the past. Sometimes something can really be what it […]
Musicians in a time of Plague: London 1665.
Times are hard for us musicians and people in the musical trades. No one’s buying violins when two months worth of gigs have been cancelled in the blink of an eye. With that in mind, the journal-letters of Stephen Bing, a chorister at St Paul’s Cathedral in the Great Plague of 1665 may be a […]
Fake or Fortune: Is it a real Stradivarius?
Every year we have dozens of people getting in touch to tell us they think they’ve found a priceless Stradivarius violin. Before you get excited, here are the facts you need to know. Benjamin Hebbert writes: Stradivarius is a famous kind of violin, and something that everyone knows about. Whether you have read Sherlock Holmes mysteries or watched […]
