VALUABLE VIOLIN

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29718, 11 January 1962, Page 8

VALUABLE VIOLIN

Check To Be Made (N.Z. Press Association) NAPIER, January 10. A Napier violin tutor, Mrs S. Dunn, believes she has unearthed a 200-year-old Italian violin perhaps worth £lOOO from a Hastings auction mart. The beautifully-preserved instrument, in a dust-covered case, was passed in without a bid at an auction sale. Leading members of the National Orchestra have acclaimed the instrument as the work of a famous 18th century maker, Joannes Baptista Guadagnini, a pupil of Stradivari. But to confirm and certify its authenticity Mrs Dunn is sending photographs to an English violin firm, W. E. Hill and Sons, of London. The maker’s name and a partly-erased date, beginning with the numbers 17 are minutely carved on the inside, visible through the sound holes. Mrs Dunn said she paid a “fair price” for the instrument, but “nothing like what it might be worth.” A genuine Guadagnini could sell in the United States for £lOOO. Mrs Dunn bought it a day after it was passed in without a bid at auction. She understands it was brought to Invercargill 100 years ago by the forebears of a man who lived at Haumoana, near Hastings.