http://www.violinist.com/blog/Rique/ Henrique Meirelles's weblog on Violinist.com. en-us © Henrique Meirelles http://www.violinist.com/blog/Rique/20126/13668/ Dear friends from violinist.com, My name is Henrique, and I'm writing from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I've been dealing with a situation over here for some weeks now and I feel that I need some kind of guidance from my fellow violinists. Well, my teacher (who, by the way, is a dear friend and great musical peer) offered to sell one of his violins, from his very personal collection. The instrument is said to be a Vuillaume, made obviously in Paris, France. I fell in love with the instrument the moment I set my eyes on it. The tone is amazing and it feels really comfortable to play it. However, as I made a true effort to read the tag, I could see that it "dates" back to 1814. Now, as far as I know, Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume started to truly make violins around the 1820's. I believe that in 1814 he wasn't even in Paris, what makes this instrument here a mere copy, right? I would like to know what kind of documents I could expect from my teacher proving the instrument's origin. Are there any certificates I could ask to see? I know that during Vuillaume's high time many other luthiers adopted his name, but all the copies I could see on the web had no dates on their tags, so why would this specific copy carry the weird date of 1814? Please let me know what you think I kinda need to figer out how to go about the whole thing. ;-) Thanks, Rique Tue, 19 Jun 2012 04:40:10 GMT