BTNRP · MS100605
English guitar
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Description
Plucked stringed instrument with a pear-shaped, flat-back soundbox. Back and ribs of flamed maple. Spruce top with rose. Neck and sickle-shaped head of lighter wood (maple, boxwood?) terminating in square-shaped finial. Ebony fretwood with twelve brass frets, and three filled holes in the spaces between the 1st and the 4th fret that would have had a capotasto (i.e. a "moving-bridge" normally made of ivory or ebony, fixed with a wing-nut and a bolt). Original Preston watch-key tuning mechanism made of brass. Two single bass strings and remainder four in double courses (wound- and plain-metal), pinned at the bottom of the body. Arched ebony bridge, tipped with ivory strip. Ivory nut and bottom saddle. Twelve-pointed, sunburst-shaped rose made of alternating dark and white wooden strips (ebony and ivory?) surrounded by a lighter wavy-flamed pattern. Fine dark-light-dark painted single-purfling along the soundboard edges, and double-purfling around the rose. Eight-pointed, floral-star marquetry inlay on the finial. This instrument is part of the Albert C. Spencer collection.