German Baroque lute after J.H. Goldt
76cm & 105cm, 13 courses; after J.H. Goldt 1734 (V&A Museum No. 4274/1856) 9 ribs; the original is in rosewood with ivory strips between. Neck and fingerboard are inlaid with elaborate marquetry panels of ivory and tortoiseshell and then engraved. The double pegbox has two pierced ivory foliage panels inlaid and is edged with ivory. Because of their size, both this and the Edlinger (No.32) may have been for Baron's D minor theorbo tuning in which the top string in f' was simply omitted and an extra note added in the bass. However in actual use it seems to work perfectly for playing Bach and Weiss at A=415Hz. At 415Hz the top string in gut would be 0.40 which is a perfectly normal size. Even the most difficult chord shapes in Bach seem in practice to be entirely feasible, so probably we have been rather too scared of these authentically large sizes in the recent past.
This is a fairly exact copy of the original but with the ivory and tortoiseshell replaced with casein ivory and snakewood. Below is an earlier copy made with holly and cocobolo.
You can see this lute being made here
Price and original inlay: £6100
With simpler decoration: £5200
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