Provenance is no Guarantee of Authenticity in the Fine Instrument Market
"The 'ex-William Primrose Guarneri viola sold by Tarisio in 2012."
Every now and then when we are asked to research the provenance of a violin, we acknowledge the added challenge involved in conducting due diligence on objects that do not fall under the ‘fine-art’ umbrella. In an attempt to bring some more clarity on due diligence practices in the fine musical instrument market, we are going to embark on an exploratory journey whereby we speak to experts in the field, musicians, as well as write feature pieces about important archives and re-narrate some key stories and historical events.
Our first guest is Jason Price, co-founder of Tarisio Fine Instruments and Bows auction house, which started out of Boston in 1999, before moving to NY in 2000 and London in 2007, where they now spearhead a market previously dominated by the big auction houses. Tarisio also acquired the Cozio Archive in 2012 which is an invaluable source of archival information.
Angelina: Jason, what makes the Cozio Archive so valuable and how can it be accessed?
Jason: The Cozio Archive is constantly enriched as we keep adding in information to it. The curator before us had already purchase some of the most important historical records, such as the W. E. Hill & Sons Archives and business records, the records of the Machold firm, the Français archives as well as a number of other historical data sources. The information is put together and unified from a property basis, which instrument is which and matching them up with the correct provenances. What you see on the website, is only the tip of the iceberg and represents about 10% of the data and images that we hold. This is partly because there is a lot of material we are not allowed to show publicly. The material can be consulted online or by submitting an online request. Anyone can send any inquiry they have and the team will attempt to answer as many questions as possible.
Angelina: There is a stolen instrument register on the website. Is that up to date and what are the criteria for an instrument to be on the register?
Jason: Our criteria for the register is that it only applies to items that are already in the archive. It would be ten times as big if we listed modern instruments by makers that we don’t follow and are out of the scope of our interest. We have had the collaboration of some major musical instrument insurers to make sure we have up to date data but it is not very easy to get this information out of them. We have assisted and participated in many cases of restitution of previously lost instruments.
Angelina: Do you get approached by people who are either claiming ownership to instruments or are looking to locate violins or other musical instruments?
Jason: Absolutely, all the time. As you know, part of our principle business is as an auction house and sometimes it will happen that an instrument will come up and someone will raise their hand and say, “That’s my mother’s violin and it was stolen from her in x year and I have the pictures to prove that.” We participate in these things probably 2-3 times a year.
Angelina: That is quite frequent, two or three times a year. Is that considered to be quite normal?
Jason: Yes, two-three time a year on average, some years it can be one and others more than that. It happens. We also get the other side of the action, where someone wants to sell a violin that has been returned or restituted to them, at the request of insurance agencies or owners themselves.
Angelina: What does the due diligence process look like in the violin trade? In the fine art world, we have many, invaluable databases and resources, both physical and digital. Do you operate in a similar way?
Jason: Good question. We use the ArtLoss register for every sale that we put together, but more just as a precaution rather than anything final. It is there to give buyers some peace of mind and it is the only external resource we use. In addition to the usual lost or stolen situations, there are also other issues that come up. The Dietmar Machold mess comes to mind. He was a German dealer, one of the world’s leading Stradivarius dealers, who created a real mess, by using both real and fake Stradivarius violins to con creditors and collectors out of millions of dollars. It’s equally fascinating and terrifying, the whole ordeal.
Angelina: Fascinating indeed. Which brings us to the issue of authenticity. Stamps, seals, inscriptions and other markings on the backs of paintings, carry very important clues about the provenance of the work and previous whereabouts. Are there equivalent physical attributions on violins?
Jason: There is exactly the same equivalent but there’s also the exact same opportunity for that to mean absolutely nothing. Most violins when they are made, they have a small paper ticket inside them that says the name of the maker, which was inserted by the maker himself, but, legitimate violins loose their labels all the time and non legitimate violins get wrong labels. So that’s actually not to helpful at all in figuring something out. Nothing is to be taken at face value. 99% of the time the label is not who made it, and the attribution that is on instrument has to always be confirmed by our expertise. The most common thing you will find is labels being either misdated or misread, being assigned to different periods, or label digits being read differently. Just like the fine art market, we have had to draw on a standard of peer review whereby you have to have a lowest denominator consensus on what something is for it to be sold as that. We have evolved into a standard where when two big experts contradict each other you go with the lowest opinion. Any smart buyer does that, it mitigates risk.
Angelina: Is that the case even if an instrument has an uninterrupted provenance listing distinguished names and owners?
Jason: You know this from your own work. Provenance is such a faulty way of addressing attribution. It’s not useful most of the time when addressing issues of authenticity.
Angelina: Where does technical analysis come into play and how important is it?
Jason: The one technical test that is invaluable in our business and has only been around for the past 20 years or so, is dendrochronology. That is super important for dating the top wood of instruments. There is now enough assembled data by dendrochronologists, that it is possible to find a match either with a known instrument or wood supply, so we can know the earliest date at which it could have been produced. Dendrochronology is a fantastic tool for corroborating expertise but you make identifications more from the craftsmanship than anything else. There are a lot of identifying parameters under which makers works that are not obvious to the untrained eye. So the analysis and the expert opinion go hand in hand.
Angelina: What is the fake and forgery situation in the market like? Are they too many to be a treat? What makes a good fake?
Jason: All the time. All. The. Time. But also, ‘fake’ is a complicated word because you see things that might not be what the label claims, but it is a little too simple to call them fakes. With 20th century material half of it is bound to not be right. The 19th and 18th century ratio is far worse. 90% of instruments that have a specific label placing them in 18th century, are not what the ticket says. Also, there is a difference between a deliberate fake and something that was up-attributed in the past. Deliberate fakes are far less common until the mid 19th century. They did exist, but they were far less common. When the copies started in the second half of the 19th century, they started quite strong. But, this means that something from the 1850s made as a copy of a 1720s violin is very easy to figure out. That’s not a convincing fake. Where it is difficult to distinguish is when you have a violin that was made in 1720, but has been relabelled as a violin made in 1720 by the guy next door, just because it is more valuable that way. That’s the most difficult type of misattribution in our business, maybe not a deliberate fake, but something that has been misattributed for hundreds of years.
Angelina: Who buys the most rare and expensive violins? I could be wrong, but I doubt that most really special violins are necessarily acquired by people who play them.
Jason:You are correct, yes, there is an interesting model which has evolved over the past 30-40 years, that the person playing the violin isn’t necessarily the person who owns it and a whole system of ‘surrogates’ for owners has popped up. There are foundations, private ones and public ones, investment vehicles, trusts, syndicated investors, wealth funds, government institutions, to mention a few. There is a whole network of systems of how these instruments can be owned and most importantly how they can be used and kept under the chin of the people who play them. The idea is often compared to the model of horse-jockey-owner, where the best horses need to be ridden by the best jockeys but the ownership is a completely different thing. Sounds like a crass analogy to make, but it’s an accurate way of describing it.
Angelina: Is the Lady Blunt still your record sale? What are you most looking forward to selling in the future?
J: The Lady Blunt Stradivarius sold for $16m and that was our record in 2011. We have beaten it a couple times since then privately but not at auction. The price of an instrument depends mainly on its condition and from which period of an artists oeuvre it comes from. The best period for a Guarneri for example would be between 1740-1744. I would love to see more Violas from Cremona. Something very strange happened there. The viola was very dominant during the first part of the 17th century and there were loads of people in Brescia making them as well as in Cremona. Then, something happened in the middle of the century right after the plague reshuffled everything and violas weren’t really made in Cremona after that. There are 10 existing complete Stradivari violas and 700 violins, there are 9 Guarneri violas and 500 Guarneri or more violins among other musical instruments. No Ruggieri violas, no Bergonzi violas, they all stopped.
It’s a mystery.
