Mandoline from 1600s on ebay

[Elliot Luber]

http://cgi.ebay.com/AMAZING-MANDOLIN-FROM-THE-1600s-YES-OVER-300-YEARS-OLD_W0QQitemZ7394793603QQcategoryZ623QQ
rdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Hey, is this real, or did they get it out of the Smithsonian catalog? http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[woodwiz]

FWIW, Just looking at the workmanship tells me that it is a knockoff. I'd have to hit the books to date the time and locale of the design, but I don't think it is worth doing. Anything that ornate would have been made for the absolute top of the market, and would have been flawless. The ill fitting joinery and ornamentation appear to be from poor manfacture, not from later damage, hence fake.

I've hit a lot of museums in my day, and done a lot of restoration work. I've never seen such shoddy work on a genuine piece of such ornateness. My guess is that it was made in the Middle East in the last 100 years, perhaps much later than that.

My bet is, he gets no bids.

[Jim Garber]

This was on eBay sometime last year for another astronomical sum. There is some discussion in the classical section on the last page of this thread (http://www.mandolincafe.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=6;t=14886;st=2025).

You may be quite right about its non-authenticity.

Jim

[woodwiz]

Just look at the difference in the workmanship on the album cover example.That's the sort of difference to which I was referring.

I had a music professor who collected and performed on Renaissance instruments, including all variety of lutes, and this one just shouts "Wrong". also I've seen a lot of fake antiques coming out of the Middle East, and it has that look. I'm not really expert enough to tell definitively from a photo, but if it were given to me for free, I'd refuse it, and never lose any sleep.