Just in: Ukraine is troubled by a smuggled Stradivarius
NewsUkrainian news sites are carying the following story:
On the Ukrainian-Moldovan border, law enforcement officers found an old violin, which was attempted to be transported out of Ukraine.
As UNIAN was told in the Belgorod-Dnestrovsky border unit of the State Border Guard Service, the attempt to export a violin by the famous Italian master Antonio Stradivari from Ukraine was blocked. According to the border guards, we are talking about a musical instrument that was made in 1730.
The violin, which was in the bag, was found during the border and customs control at the Palanka-Mayaki-Udobnoe checkpoint in the passenger compartment of the regular bus.
“However, as it turned out, the world-famous item allegedly has no owner. Only two foreign drivers and a flight attendant were in the vehicle. They explained that the violin was a delivery that was not received by the addressee on the territory of Ukraine,” the border guards said.
It is noted that Antonio Stradivari created almost 2.5 thousand unique instruments, but only about 650 of them have survived to this day.
“Therefore, the “queen of the orchestra” was seized and handed over for expert examination,” the border guards say.
The press service of the Odessa customs specified that they had already identified the person who was carrying the violin. “An antique instrument was tried to be taken out by a citizen of Ukraine, who was on a regular bus to Moldova. A case with a musical instrument and a bow was found among the personal belongings of a passenger,” the customs officers said. They say that on the inside of the bottom of the violin is a label that says: “ANTONIUS STRADIUARIUS CREMONENFIS FACIЕBAT ANNО 1730”.
Very unlikely that it was a real Strad or that any of these guys had the ability to ascertain whether it was.
Some photos from a couple of Odesa-related Websites:
https://od.vgorode.ua/news/sobytyia/a1245519-odesskie-pohranichniki-nashli-skripku-stradivari
https://odessa.online/iz-odesskoj-oblasti-za-granitsu-pytalis-vyvezti-skripku-stradivari/
I would think that Odessa has much more to be concerned about lately than an allegedly smuggled violin of dubious ownership…Wait a minute…that sounds like the one I misplaced on the train to Kyiv when I was visiting relatives there recently!!!
I’m guessing that it turns out to be a copy.
There were 100s of cheap and less-than-cheerful student violins with authentic-looking Strad labels around in the last century. Even my crappy state-school orchestra could boast at least 2 of them!
Looking at those pictures, it’s most likely a german 1920’s violin with a facsimile label.
I have seen lots of violins with a Stradivarius label…
It has “Tuners” for all four strings (so you can adjust the string’s intonation up or down just by turning the, well on a watch you’d call it the crown, that moves the hands, instead of turning the pegs because that is hard for a kid, and awkward for anyone on the E string. Very very few professionals playing any good instrument have tuners on all four strings, and very few collector owners of a Stad would equip all strings with a tuner.
As for the label, my old high school orchestra director got so tired of getting calls to rush over and inspect the Stradivarius that someone found in Aunt Gladys’s back closet that he bought an entire pad of fake Stradivarius labels. If the family would insist it had to be valuable because of the label, he’d whip out the pad of labels and say “you mean like these? Would you like some?” And those fake labels looked fairly convincing.
The case looks interesting however. The bow might be lower end as well.