File:Violin (AM 1998.60.27-5).jpg

English: Violin, irregular, unusual shaped body outline, long fingerboard, sloping shoulders. Scroll head four pegs four strings one broken bridge, one metal screw (fine tuner) three missing. Reverse shaped C' sounds holes, attached chin rest. Case, solid wood heart shape velvet lined for body, torn paper sailing ship label on back 1 ‘Improved Patent’ violin Thomas Howell, Bristol, England, 1836 maple, spruce, (mahogany), poplar, pearl, ebony, gut, tailpiece replaced, length of back 306 mm labelled ‘PATENT - T. HOWELL BRISTOL - INVENTOR’ ‘No. 15’, on reverse ‘PATENT’ with original case- mahogany, velvet, brass, steel 1998.60.27 Castle 34 Howell’s Improved Patent is a hybrid variant of the violin combining features of the viol family with its reversed C-shaped holes, narrow sloping shoulders and a long fingerboard. When played it ‘produces a richer, more piercing tone than an ordinary violin, besides differing in some points of construction’. Ed Heron-Allen in his fundamental book on the history Violin making- as it was and is remarked that ‘In 1835 Thomas Howell took out a patent for a new form of violin. Its object was, by shortening the upper bouts and lengthening the fingerboard, to facilitate playing the uppers shifts, and obviating ‘that inelegance of action which is so much complained of, even in the most expert of performers.’ The back and belly were flat, the tailpiece glued to the instrument, to be ‘out of the way of the chin’ and the sound holes (returned) to the vogue of the fifteenth century.’ According to the Castles ‘an early Napier pioneer Maori translator obtained (this violin) from a Maori Chief for doing him a service’.