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

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Greg Clinkingbeard

I believe this is the same cello (located in Hungary).

http://www.netinstruments.com/cellos/cello/34740

Leandro died in 1946. Five years before the instrument was supposedly made...........

You are confusing Leandro Sr. With his Son. This is the Bisiach Brothers supposed label, Giacomo & Leandro.

Still, the price is more Hungarian than Italian as is the antiqued Cello. Who knows, maybe it sounds better than a real Bisiach Bros. That's a lot of paperwork for one Cello, especially a modern one as the dates or the papers are the same as the Cello.

[Ken Smith]

Ok, you Detectives. You have missed the biggest clue here. That is the label. The Bisiach Label, the real one is a normal sized one, not this big 'card' sized one which is the same one as was in my Bass. I have a book of 20th century makers and besides labels that have a section on address (business cards).

The 'label' used in both this Cello and my former Bass is actually the Bros. 'calling card', NOT their label.

The carving of the Scroll is typical of Hungarian fakes as seen on a pair of Goffriller's as well (Cello and Bass). This is not the 16th century hand knives of Poplar aged 400 years yet they make the upper turn look as if it was difficult to make smooth.

Look for the obvious signs. That makes it easier. You just need to know what those signs are.

On the Forum pics of the 3 Scrolls, the one on the left and right have similar markings of an old dull knife. The one in the middle has bad peg bushings. You would expect neater work unless it was done to make it look old. 1951 is not all that old. I don't feel old and I was born in that year as well. I still have MY original Neck.. lol

[Martin Sheridan]

"Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive", Shakespeare.

The violin maker Roger Hargrave has pointed out that the best fakes are made by restorers who are in the best position to do so. The reason is that they are literally in close proximity to the originals and often learn to carry out extremely delicate and undetectable repairs. In short, they are the ones who develop the best skills to do the faking. I saw a Nicolo Amati violin about 25 years ago that had an entire section of the top replaced and it was absolutely undetectable to my eye even after it was pointed out to me the area that had been replaced. Wood, varnish, sub varnish, workmanship; undetectable.

Hargrave himself gained extra fame about a decade ago when it was discovered that a G.B. Guadanini violin up for auction was actually a recent work by him. The only reason it was detected was that a friend of Hargraves had seen the violin shortly after its completion at his shop and then discovered it at the auction. Hargrave himself had no knowledge of the deal.

Like many makers I've done a lot of antiquing with no intention to deceive and have sometimes been surprised and bemused by players who could not accept my telling them that the instrument was new. I pass this off as witness to the well established notion that we see what we wish to see.

Personally I have only seen two violins in my lifetime that absolutely convinced me that they were old when they were not and with both there was no attempt at disquising or presenting them as anything other than that of contemporary work and they had the labels of the makers. However, my suspicion is that they will both gain new, read "old", labels at some point in the future. Neither though had the appearance of Italian work.

Incidently, Hargrave has said that the work of the late 19th century and 20th century Italian makers is already so polluted that we may never know who made what.

Many violins were antiqued when they were made and are now quite old themselves lending some extra credence to their disquise. Some shops went to great length to antique violins including grafted scrolls and real reparied cracks.

I'll tell a story on myself. About 20 years ago I traveled to Pennsylvania to buy a beat up bass from an amatuer reparier in a small mountain community. After an enjoyable conversation and concluding the purchase of the bass I was in my car, engine running and ready to leave when the Pennslyvanian hurried back to my car with a somewhat battered violin that he said had been found by some friends inside a wall of an old house they were restoring. The neck was out, it was missing a C bout rib and of course it had an early 19th centruy Italian label. I ended up buying the violin and was quite taken with it, it had a label which matched that of a somewhat obscure Italian maker, but after the initial enthusiasm of the find wore off I realized that it was probably a modern Bohemian violin from around 1920 and that I had paid too much. I kept that violin as a reminder not to get carried away.

I believe that experienced and informed repairers and makers would spot a faked bass reputedly from the classic period in a heart beat. However, as with violins, early to mid 20th centruy fakery would be much harder to detect. Most of us have not seen enough known legitimate works. I know of few early to mid 20th century Italian makers who have concentrated on basses, so it would be easier for someone to take a bass from this period and pass it off as Italian but with the caveat that it was handmade, one of a kind bass and not a mass produced product from one of the factories.
Two years ago a player showed me his bass which had been sold to him as a 20th century Italian bass. All I could tell him in honesty was that I had seen two other basses attributed to that maker and that it was not by the same maker. It's my belief that the bass was Italian but it was not made by the person who had made the other basses with that attribution, and I have no way of knowing if the other two basses were made by the maker they were attributed to. The question then is how would anyone know? And that may be the subject of another post as my coffee is calling me and I don't feel like writing any more right now.

[Ken Smith]

"Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive", Shakespeare.?

In the Morris book of British makes at the end of the chapter on BF Fendt II, he writes, and I 'quote';

"Oh what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive!"

Slightly different but I never knew its origin 'till now.

The English made actual fakes over 150 years ago but we seem now to mainly point the finger at the Gypsy's. The Morris Book was written about a century ago originally. My book is an original second edition from 1920. At that point in time, the Fendt's were viewed as criminals for the most part. Today, we think of them as the most clever workman ever to work the British Isles. These are the sons of Bernhardt Fendt I. Also in that mix add the son of his pupil John Lott I which is JF Lott Jr. aka Jack Lott. Between the 2nd generation of London makers of the Fendts and Jack Lott, we have many a crooked fiddle roaming around. Some of the Basses made back then were antiqued as well but rarely. After 150-200 years, they are actually very old. My own Hart bass is from that era and looks ages older than my Violincello grade Gilkes Bass which was made with the most transperant high grade Varnish of its time. The crackled Red over the Gold makes the Hart look from a distance like a real Maggini, not just a model. I have seen a Kennedy Bass like this as well.

[Martin Sheridan]

Ken,
"Oh wad the power the Gifty gae us, to see ourselves as others see us"
Bobby Burns.

As in the other quote....don't quote me on that.

[Richard Prowse]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

"Oh what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive", Shakespeare.?

In the Morris book of British makes at the end of the chapter on BF Fendt II, he writes, and I 'quote';

"Oh what a tangled web we weave When first we practice to deceive!"

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive."
Sir Walter Scott (the author), being an Englishman, spelt the verb form of 'practice' with an 's'.
Sorry, but detail is important.

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Richard Prowse

"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive."
Sir Walter Scott (the author), being an Englishman, spelt the verb form of 'practice' with an 's'.
Sorry, but detail is important.

But to deceive, it must be spelled/spelt correctly, no?

[Richard Prowse]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

But to deceive, it must be spelled/spelt correctly, no?

Ken, my dear friend, what the heck are you talking about?
Sorry, but I don't get your point.
And, I must add, how does having a winking blue guy assist my understanding? I mean, you might as well have someone performing souix war dance!

[Ken Smith]

Sorry to have left this out here but a couple of years after the Bisiach labeled bass was sold, I learned even more about the bass from some bass dealers from Hungary that visited me.


So, I just added this to the Bisiach page in the archives of my DB website.



Special Note: Some time after selling this bass we learned more about its possible origin and make. It is now believed to be a handmade bass from Romania (I have seen one other now) and then purchased by a Hungarian maker and 'Antiqued' to look older than it actually is. The bass is well made and with a beautiful sound, often preferred over older basses with pedigree origins selling for much higher prices. For sound, model and condition, this is a great bass to play and own. Ken Smith

[Sam Sherry]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

Ok, you Detectives. You have missed the biggest clue here. . . . I have a book of 20th century makers and besides labels that have a section on address (business cards).

Ken, I have got to wonder whether that book is entirely authentic . . . .

Thanks for the moment's grin. BEST, SAM

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Sam Sherry

Ken, I have got to wonder whether that book is entirely authentic . . . .

Thanks for the moment's grin. BEST, SAM

Good eyes Sam.. 20th century, not 29th. I fixed it and edited the quote as well. Please forgive me. We should live so long.. On my keyboard the 9 and 0 are right next to each other. Doesn't 0 come before 1?

[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.

[Ken Smith]

Besides Brinser there are many Labels in the Jalovec books as well as some of the old English Books.

On your Guad./apprentice comment, is this just Turin or all of Italy? I don't think this is true in general. Maybe the industry itself died down a little along with it the desire to apprentice in that field.

On the Label thing once again, many a dealer have taken labels out of instruments and replaced them with either a more famous one or just made a fake more famous one if not just throw a label in it to mark up the price. Our friend Bob B. has seen plenty of 'homeless' labels in his time. In my opinion, short of a disaster, there is very little reason to remove a label from an instrument other than for the purpose of profiteering.

[Martin Sheridan]

One of the most import ways of identifying an instrument is to know what the genuine label looks like. Brinser did a service by showing us copies of labels from violins he had purchased directly from the makers. So they are both a source of help and a source of tomfoolery. That's also somewhat true with all of the books that have copies of labels, it's just that the Brinser book is the most reliable for 20th centruy Italian makers and they in turn are the ones whose identities are being co opted.

So far as I know, Carol Berzoni (III?) and G. B Guadanini are considered to be the last of the Cremonese makers from the golden period. I'm not sure of the exact period or number of years, but there were no makers in Cremona for a long time. It is believed that the Ceruti were self taught (though their instruments are exceptionally well crafted and designed), and I think there are many sources that say that the direct line of maker to apprentice died out. I've seen two or three dozen 19th and up to mid 20th century Italian violins and they are pretty crude by comparison to the earlier makers. Their work was often haphazard, or we might even say somewhat artistic, but at least they knew the classic design. In the late 19th century and early 20th century there are some real stand outs like the Bisiachs and the Antonazzis but most of them are the also rans. Workmanship and varnish are crude. I know a man who went to the Italian school in Cremona in the early 70s and he said they did not even teach varnishing and knew nothing about how to produce a good varnish. He had to learn it later. He said that the only varnish they made was straight shellac. I worked on a cello made at the school in 1974, this was in 76 or 77 and it was fairly crude and had a butt ugly varnish. Of course since it was "Italian" (by an American) the price paid was astronomical for the time.