Guitar.

Technical description: Bookmatched soundboard of wide-grained spruce. Bridge missing, but ebony mustachios survive. Soundhole 81mm diameter. Purfling around soundhole of strips of ebony/willow/ebony/willow, then a half-herringbone design in ebony and willow, then strips of willow/ebony/willow, and then the reverse half- herringbone design in ebony and willow, and then further strips of willow/ebony/willow/ebony. Edging around soundboard of alternate pieces of ebony and willow cut diagonally to give a barber-pole effect. Back and sides of figured maple. The sides are bookmatched and join at the bottom with a tapered piece of ebony. There is an ivory endpin. There is an inked purfling design on the sides at the top and bottom consisting of a thin black line, then a wide brown band and then two further thin black lines. The back is of two pieces, bookmatched, with the ebony and willow alternate barber-pole pieces as an edging and the same inked purfling as appears on the sides. There is an ivory button at the top of the back. The heel, neck and head are of black stained maple. The heel joins the neck at a sharp angle and the neck has a Vjoint with the head. There are eight pegholes into the head. The top of the head is veneered in rosewood. The nut is set for six strings and is of ebony. The fingerboard is ebony with ivory frets. It extends onto the soundboard. The neck is 283mm long, 48.5mm wide at the nut and 57.5mm wide at the body join. Underneath the ebony fingerboard is a rosewood piece with may be an original fingerboard, flush with the top of the soundboard. The neck joins the body halfway along fret10 but the rosewood section underneath has traces of ivory frets which imply the body join was halfway along fret11. Repair History: Early in its life this instrument was modernised by adding a thin fingerboard running up to the sound-hole and the new pin fastening bridge was placed lower to extend the string length from 584 to 630. There is no sign of the original bridge.