German violin labelled Steiner

Of the hundreds of thousands of violins made in the Vogtland area of eastern Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many were labelled with the names of the great Cremonese makers, Stradivari, Guarneri del Gesu and Nicolo Amati. One great German maker joined this triumvirate, the Tirolean luthier Jakob Stainer, who, up until the end of the eighteenth century, outshone his Cremonese counterparts in popular opinion. Well into the early twentieth century, German workshops continued to pay homage to their erstwhile supreme master. This attractive copy has an attractive, golden red-brown, lightly antiqued varnish and an elegantly arched maple back. The tone is clean and clear, and speaks very freely across all four strings.