Books › Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937 › scan 260
Scan 260
Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937
17 lines. Read by computer on 19 September 2026. Printed page 234. See the scan on archive.org.
1ERNEST A. ANDERBERG
3Ernest A. Anderberg, the son of Pehr A. Anderberg⁵ one of the early guitar makers in the United States, was born in Mount Vernon, New York.
5He worked first for John C. Haynes & Co. while his father had charge of their guitar factory. When his father started his own shop on [address hidden], Chelsea, he worked there making both guitars and mandolins till about 1893. Then he was with the Snedeker Company of Winchester, Indiana, for about a year after which he went to Philadelphia to start making guitars and mandolins in a small way for George Bauer, who owned a music store there. Presently Mr. Bauer joined S. S. Stewart in the firm of Stewart and Bauer. Ernest Anderberg continued with this firm until his father came to take charge of the plectrum manufacturing department.
7After this he worked as a repairer for different Philadelphia concerns until he entered the employ of Elias Howe Co. He remained with this house for about twenty years, first as a repairer and for about ten years as head of their department of old violins and repairing.
9Since Elias Howe Co. went out of business he has had his own shop at his home, [address hidden], Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he deals in stringed instruments and repairs all kinds of them except harps.
11Upon the death of William H. Howe Mr. Anderberg acquired a unique collection of twenty-two instruments, rare models, picked up by Elias Howe on his European trips made to find such instruments. So far as is known no one of these has ever been duplicated, because they are "as he explains, the result of efforts to improve on perfection."⁶ "One violin, a Württemberg instrument, is flat and is played without the use of a tailpiece, the ends of the fingerboard acting as a bridge. Another, a French model, is twice as large below the bridge as above. Still others have unexpected curves and indentures."⁶
13The prize of the whole collection is a model "attributed to Gasparo da Salo of Brescia, who plied his art one hundred years before the great Stradivarius and who is credited with determining the present form of the violin."⁶ This is "considered the oldest
15⁵ See Pehr A. Anderberg Appendix IV Section F p. 274.
16⁶ Ingham, Travis. Boston Herald, April 10, 1932 p. 3, "Violin 400 Years Old in Possession of Chelsea Collector."
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