This extremely rare instrument survives with its original neck, fingerboard, and tailpiece. Though there is no label, the viol was probably built by a pieceworker for an entrepreneur who left it unmarked. The belly’s construction, with five bent staves, favors a time frame of 1640 to 1665. In addition, the carnation ornament is hatched with a hot needle (pyroengraved) to imitate black embroidery patterns, a fashionable decoration in England in the decades around 1600. Later, the hot-needle technology was replaced by blackened score lines to fill flower ornaments, as found in other viols.
