Dorchester, Massachusetts, United States
Length 132 cm, width 54.6 cm (Length 51 15/16 in., width 21 1/2 in.)
Maple, pine, ebony

Inscriptions: Manuscript label: Made & Sold by / Benjamin Crehore at / Dorchester 1788

Classification: Musical instruments

Object is currently not on view

One-piece back of slab-cut maple. Ribs of maple with faint medium curl. Later neck of maple with wide irregular curl. Original massive scroll with wide ears, made from two pieces of maple. Two-piece belly of wide-grain white pine (seam off-center). No purfling. Large-headed tuning pegs (one later) of stained maple. Fingerboard, nut (both later), and saddle of ebony. Short endpin of maple painted/stained black. Dark red-brown varnish. Interior construction: Later neck block, but platform carved from back for footed neck. Short, closely-spaced pine triangular liners along all of back and much of belly. Small corner blocks (later?). Long thin bassbar (later?) with with additional short and wide bassbar alongside.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Otis Norcross Fund, 1976
Accession number: 1976.147

Provenance/Ownership History: Purchased from Harold Priest of Harvard, Massachusetts. Priest purchased the instrument in the early 1970s at an auction in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is likely the same instrument included in a 1902 exhibition held by Chickering and Sons at Boston's Horticultural Hall, and also closely matches the description of an instrument cited in a 1916 article by William H. Howe, who stated that it had formerly been used at the Old South Church in Weymouth, Massachusetts.

This object is included in the following Selected Tour(s):

• Bowed String Musical Instruments