ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a remarkable quintet of instruments. It describes a project of assembling and restoring to playing condition the earliest surviving set of English string instruments, made by William Baker of Oxford. The five instruments include a very early English bass violin, dating from 1672, another bass instrument dating from 1682, and a viola and two violins, dating from 1683. The Baker bass violins are interesting because they appear to be among the oldest surviving English examples. Many paintings of the period represent violinists playing their instruments in exactly the way, a practice which the players of The Baker Collection have consciously tried to emulate. There are dates on labels in all of the instruments and, although the labels appear to be original only in the two bass instruments, John Topham has undertaken dendrochronological analysis of the five instruments and confirms the dating of the instruments to mid-late seventeenth century.
