Talk of Fakes (or Antiqued newer Basses) came up......

[Martin Sheridan]

Sadly the Brinser book on modern Italian makers has enabled the fakers by providing pages of facimiles of the labels.
I was in a violin shop once that had a modern Chinese instrument varnished from the white with a label in it from that book. Since I had just identified a Cremonese violin without recourse to looking at the label they handed me the new violin and said that it had been varnished at the shop by one of their repairers. I've wondered then and since then if they would had mentioned it if I hadn't identified the first violin? Let's hope so.
But as I mentioned above the identification of contemporary Italian violin makers has been hopelessly poluted already. It will be even harder in a hundred years to know what's what.
I was told by an expert in American violins (there may be only one) that many hand made American violins are sent to Europe where they acquire the spurious Italian labels. The reason being is that they so closely resemble those violins. After the death of G B Guadanini the Italian apprenticeship system pretty much died out so that those who wanted to make violins were mostly self taught which was also the case with most American makers up until the advent of the American violin making schools which now only covers a span of about thirty years.