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    The Instrument Archive

    The Monograph Collection

    Single-instrument studies by John Dilworth · Edited by John Milnes

    Each monograph takes one great instrument and examines it completely: its documented history and provenance, the form it was built on, the wood, arching, soundholes, scroll and varnish — with full-page studio photography, detail photography and a table of measurements. First published in 2014 by Usk Publishing, the texts are now being made freely available here.

    The monographs

    Front view of the ‘La Pucelle’ Stradivari violin of 1709
    Monograph I

    Antonio Stradivari
    ‘La Pucelle’ Violin, 1709

    The best-preserved Stradivari outside a museum: from Vuillaume and the Clark family to David Fulton, with a full study of its wood, arching, scroll and varnish. Photographs by Tucker Densley and John Milnes.

    Read the monograph →

    II
    Monograph II · Forthcoming

    Antonio Stradivari
    The ‘Archinto’ Cello, 1689

    One of the four or five finest Stradivari cellos: Count Archinto, Cozio di Salabue and the Hills, and the cello’s reduction from its archaic large pattern.

    III
    Monograph III · Forthcoming

    Antonio Stradivari
    ‘Tyrrell’ Violin, 1717

    A late Golden Period violin of 1717.

    IV
    Monograph IV · Forthcoming

    Jacob Stainer
    The ‘King’ Violin, c.1670

    “The King of all the Stainers”: Herrmann, Hottinger and the Tyrolean master’s finest violin, now played by Matthew Truscott.

    About the series

    The Monograph Collection was conceived by Amati and J & A Beare as a series of short, closely observed books, each devoted to a single instrument of the first rank. John Dilworth’s text is accompanied by studio photography commissioned for each title and by John Milnes’s detail photography, and every volume closes with a table of measurements taken from the instrument itself.

    Antonio Stradivari in the Instrument Archive · Search the Archive · Contact Amati about the Monograph Collection