Tarisio Online Auction Turns Ten
Tarisio, the New York-based violin auctioneer, held its first auction ten years ago this month—the first preview was held in a Boston pub. With multi-city previews and the actual bidding conducted later online, the specialist auction house nimbly took advantage of the best aspects of the brick-and-mortar approach and the new online format to become a major player in the international violin trade.
Tarisio, aptly named for the itinerant violin dealer Luigi Tarisio, is the brainchild of three partners: American violin dealer Christopher Reuning, European dealer and author Dmitry Ginden, and Jason Price, at the time a young violin maker trying to finish a literature degree and desperate to get back into the violin world. It was founded at the beginning of the eBay era.
For years, Reuning and Ginden had discussed ways to improve violin auctions by offering better expertise, guarantees to the buyer, and improved customer service. The eBay format was not quite working for violins, but all three men saw the potential to make auctions more accessible. “There’s a certain intimidation factor,” says Price of standing in the auction room with a paddle, publicly committing to spending a particular amount of money. “That works very well for a certain type of buyer, but not for everyone.
“[Bidding online] also helps shrink the geographical boundaries. You can have people bidding in their pajamas in Singapore, and in the room next door in New York!”
As a start-up, Tarisio had no fixed address and no financing. “I was running it out of my little apartment in Williamstown, Massachusetts, going to classes at the same time,” says Price, recalling the manic early days. Photography was done at Reuning’s Boston shop “until Chris kicked us out! Then we moved to the back of a chiropractor’s office—it was cheap rent. I was surrounded by these plastic skeletons, and models of pelvises and skulls. It was a weird, surreal experience in the middle of the night.”
How times have changed.
In May 2000, Tarisio’s sale of a Brothers Amati viola set a record of $775,500. “That’s when we moved out of the chiropractor’s office,” Price says. The subsequent sale of Isaac Stern’s estate further established the company’s reputation. Today—with offices in New York and London—Tarisio holds seven sales annually and grosses, on average, close to $10 million.
Auction News
Highlights of Christie’s October 13 New York sale include UCLA’s Lachmann Collection of early instruments, featuring a tenor viola da gamba by
Pieter Rombouts, 1708, Amsterdam. The sale also features the first installment of a very large private collection of fine French, English, and German bows.
Bow Makers Rally Behind the IPCI
Bow makers around the country are picking up their planes and banding together to make bows as a fund raiser for the International Pernambuco Conservation Initiative, dedicated to the conservation and sustainable use of pernambuco, the wood of choice for bows. Small groups of makers, coordinated by IPCI board member Morgan Andersen, are on track to produce ten collaborative bows in the coming year. The bows will be sold by violin shops throughout the States, with dealers donating their consignment fees. Each bow will bear an IPCI stamp and those of its makers. Several alternative-wood bows will also be for sale. To find out what’s currently available, visit the IPCI website, ipci-usa.org.
Buying Power at Your Fingertips
Have you ever wondered what instruments by your maker are fetching at auction? Find out in a few
seconds. Not sure the bow you’re being offered is really what it says it is? Brompton’s Auctioneers of
London has just made a lot of information about purchasing instruments and bows more accessible with a free, searchable database called the Yearbook. The online guide contains up-to-date auction results for all houses, brief biographies of hundreds of makers, and an ever-growing photo archive. Search the maker by name and compare the bow in question to photos of the real thing. You can compare up to five examples side by side, and read in-depth articles on important violin and bow makers written by such experts as John Dilworth and Peter Oxley. bromptonsauctioneers.com
A Guide to Buying Bows
Ever go shopping for a high-end bow and wonder why some cost a few thousand and others cost tens of thousands? Perhaps you’ve left a shop with your head spinning, full of names of bow makers and places of origin, and an uneasy feeling that you were supposed to know why these are important. The Essential Guide to Bows of the Violin Family, by violinist Gabriel Schaff, is a useful introduction to the fine bow market for musicians hoping to find the proverbial magic wand—without losing their shirts. Chapters on the history and evolution of the bow offer enough context to recognize significant names and places without getting bogged down in excessive detail. The book also explains how bows are priced. There’s practical advice on where to shop, the delicate issues of teacher involvement and commissions, how to
audition bows, and bow care.
$70, schaff.bows@gmail.com |
