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In Focus: A 1679 violin by Hendrick Aerninck

2023-02-15T09:37:00

Aerninck 1679 9424_pg3

Michel Samson presents the 17th-century Dutch instrument

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Hendrick Aerninck was a 17th-century Dutch maker. According to Dirk J. Balfoort he was born in 1649 in Quakenburg, Westphalia. In 1672 he lived in Leiden. After that he seems to have gone to Amsterdam because in 1677 a Hendrick Aerninck ‘violin maker’ lived on the street NZ Achterburgwal. The following year we find an address for him back in Leiden. The last mention of his name appears in Leiden, in a 1701 notary writ.

Max Möller’s book The Violin Makers of the Low Countries contains two pictures of an Aerninck viola. He is quite complimentary about it: ‘an elegantly shaped instrument with long corners and well-made soundholes; his work bears the signs of thorough training. His varnish is beautiful and of a soft composition. In one respect only, one might call his finish somewhat deficient, in that the purfling of the top and back of instruments I have seen has only been traced on.’..

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