Laprevotte Violin: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This violin was made by Etienne Laprevotte in Paris, France in 1834. Laprevotte was born in Mirecourt at the end of the 18th century and died in Paris in 1856. He was appointed maker to the Duke of Bordeaux and achieved his greatest reputation for beautifully crafted guitars. This violin retains a reset original neck, bassbar and three original pegs. Ii is made of a one-piece table of spruce, one-piece back of slab-cut maple with broad, irregular horizontal figure, ribs of similar maple; moderately deeply figured original (but reset) neck, with pegbox and scroll, and a semitransparent dark reddish-orange varnish

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 1834
• maker: Laprevotte, Etienne
• Object Name: violin
• Physical Description: fir (belly material)
• Physical Description: ebony (tuning pegs material)
• Physical Description: spruce (table material)
• Physical Description: maple (back material)
• Measurements: overall: 23 1/2 in x 7 1/4 in x 3 5/8 in; 59.69 cm x 18.415 cm x 9.2075 cm
• Place Made: France: Île-de-France, Paris
• ID Number: MI.096610
• catalog number: 96610
• accession number: 31631
• Credit Line: Gift of H. Carrington Bolton
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.