Making History

Alex Bishop takes a trip to Oxford to indulge in the beauty and craftmanship of guitars from centuries past

- Alex Bishop

What does a luthier do in his time off? Well, in my case, one Sunday morning in October I clad myself in Lycra and cycled 140km across the south of England to visit one of the UK's finest musical instrument collections, which is located at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Five hours and a very big full English breakfast later, I found myself standing (no longer in Lycra, thankfully) before a glass cabinet containing 'The Messiah', a violin crafted by preeminent luthier Antonio Stradivari. Having been kept for most of its life under lock and key in a collection, the violin was often anticipated but — like its namesake — never appeared.

For an instrument more than 300 years old, it's in astonishingly good condition, which makes it the most famous violin in the world. However, I was not here to ogle a mere violin. Instead, I was rather more interested in its fretted counterparts in the adjacent cabinet - a quartet of 17th-century guitars.

Striking Showpieces