Scan 533
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1909
4 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 455. See the scan on archive.org.
1ANOTHER WANDERING SCROLL.
3Among the collection of valuable Violins belonging to the late Mr. James Goding, was a Stradivari Violin, dated 1710, which had been deprived of its original scroll, and bore a supposititious figure-head by David Tecchler, owing to a piece of vandalism perpetrated by an eccentric amateur. The original scroll had found its way to an Italian Violin of some merit, the value of which was considerably enhanced by the newly-acquired headpiece, which gave to the whole instrument an air of importance to which it could lay no claim till it carried on its shoulders a head belonging to the aristocracy of Fiddles. During a period of about twenty years this mongrel Fiddle became the property of as many owners, and ultimately fell into my hands. Leaving this instrument, we will follow the history of the Stradivari, date 1710. At the dispersion of Mr. Goding's collection by Messrs. Christie and Manson, in the year 1857, a well-known amateur purchased the Violin for the sum of seventy pounds, the loss of its scroll preventing the realisation of a higher figure. Sixteen years after this event the purchaser applied to me for a Stradivari scroll, that he might make his instrument complete. The mongrel Violin described above being in my possession, decapitation was duly performed, and the Stradivari received
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