The Selling of the 'Lady Blunt': Luck Be a Lady
Provenance, preservation, and philanthropy combine in a price-setting sale of the ageless ‘Lady Blunt’ Stradivari violin
The 1721 ‘Lady Blunt’ Stradivari violin
Chatoyance. Shining like a cat’s eye, this optical illusion of depth and light in gemstones such as the tiger’s eye or certain types of flamed wood, can’t be captured in photographs. No image can completely capture the brilliance of a living eye, nor can a photograph substitute for seeing the 1721 “Lady Blunt” Stradivari violin in person.
On a sunny morning in the New York offices of online auction house Tarisio, an elegant wooden box, the Lady Blunt’s old-fashioned presentation case, is visible on Tarisio director Jason Price’s desk through a glass wall. In a tryout room down the hall, Price hands me the violin I’ve heard about for years but never expected to see. Sunlight pours across the violin’s curves and arches, revealing the wood’s fibers, reflecting gemlike shades of red and gold and subtler browns.
Light appears almost to be emitting from the violin rather than falling into it.
Stradivari’s varnish is famous for chatoyance. But, peering into the surface of this particular violin, it’s clear that few people today have ever really seen Stradivari’s varnish. Three hundred years of use, by even the most careful custodians, usually wipes away the work of the master’s hand, but the Lady Blunt is so fresh that the maker’s brush strokes are still there.
That’s because, first by accident, and then by collectors who recognized its importance, the Lady Blunt has been set aside for most of its 290 years and kept in a state of exceptional preservation bested only by the Strad violin known as the “Messiah.”
The violin made news worldwide on June 20 when it sold at auction for ...
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