This illustration of a violin by Daniel Parker was published in The Strad, December 1986. The following text is extracted from the article accompanying the photographs:
Although most writers on the violin have taken Daniel Parker to heart, waxing euphoric about this most individual of makers, he has remained an enigma, his apparently unique style not easily placed in the history of the craft in England. It seems probable that he was born in London around 1680, the near contemporary of Barak Norman, whose earliest work dates from 1692 and who died in 1740.
The violin pictured here although certainly influenced by Stradivari, and of large size, has little specific connection with the Long Pattern of that maker. The curves are freer, the 'C' bouts more curvaceous, and the arching full in the extreme. Wide, deeply gouged edges provide a cresta run in which the purfling careers round the plate, barely contained by the banked turns, rattling and deflected off each bump in the channel. The vigorous broad-grained British pine competes for space, reed lines zooming up and down, crashing into the soundholes, sunk deeply into the arching. The whole is drenched in red, and perhaps mildly perturbed by the obtrusively long black fingerboard masking its breast.
The principal dimensions are: Length of back 360mm; Stop length 193mm; Width of top bouts 167mm; Width of middle bouts 112mm; Width of lower bouts 208mm; Rib height 29.5-31mm.
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