Mount “Hollow Back Violin"
date: label: Date made
content: 1852
name: label: maker
content: Mount, William S.
notes: label: Description
content: This “Hollow Back Violin" was invented by William S. Mount of Stony Brook, New York. The patent model was made by Mount’s friend James H. Ward in 1852 and received U.S. Patent number 8,981. William Sidney Mount is best known as an important American genre painter. He also invented a steamboat paddle wheel, a two-hulled sailboat and a painting studio on wheels. Mount studied folk music, was fascinated by the violin and believed that a concave shape and a short soundpost would result in a fuller, richer, more powerful tone. He displayed his instruments in the 1853 New York World’s Fair Crystal Palace, demonstrating the hollow back model himself. The instruments were praised by contemporary musicians. This violin is made of a one-piece table of spruce, one-piece back of maple with irregular broad horizontal figure, ribs of slab-cut maple with faint irregular figure, neck of mildly figured maple with pegbox and scroll with attached black ears, and a yellow-brown varnish.
place: label: Place Made
content: United States: New York, Stony Brook
setName: label: See more items in
content: Culture and the Arts: Musical Instruments
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content: Music & Musical Instruments
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content: Violins
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content: Patent Models
label: Exhibition
content: Inventing in America
label: Exhibition Location
content: National Museum of American History
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: MI.251397
label: catalog number
content: 251397
label: accession number
content: 48889
label: patent number
content: 8981
objectType: label: Object Name
content: violin
label: Object Type
content: Patent Model
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: ebony (finger board material)
label: Physical Description
content: pine (belly material)
label: Physical Description
content: maple (back material)
label: Physical Description
content: spruce (table material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 24 3/4 in x 8 1/2 in x 4 in; 62.865 cm x 21.59 cm x 10.16 cm