This is a picture of a few antique Italian jacks. These samples are perhaps around 250 to 300 years old, and they may have come from the shop of Bartolomeo Cristofori in Florence. These jacks were given leather plectra sometime in the 19th century, perhaps in the studio of Leopoldo Franciolini, a notorious dealer in musical instruments. More about him later. In the event, these jacks very likely started out life with quill plectra, and if these are indeed Cristofori's jacks, the quill would have come from vulture feathers.
Notice the writing on the right jack, what appears to be some kind of symbols. The lower symbol is the number "2", and the upper symbol is 28. These are standard arabic number, just executed in a rather peculiar hand writing. Anyway, the numbers mean that this jack is from the second register (the front one, closest to the player), and its the 28th jack from the bottom note.
The middle jack has its back to us so we can see the brass spring - the little black rectangle in front of the back of the tongue. This is a bit of brass that's been hammered or rolled flat, and it still works after at least 250 years, even though it's discolored and a bit corroded. I use a brass spring in my jacks, though I used brass wire .010" (that's ten thou...) in diameter. Otherwise, my jacks are nearly identical in form. These particular old jacks are made of walnut, and tongues are beech. I used beech for the bodies, and holly for the tongues. At the bottom of the jacks you can see a small bit of wood sticking down - it's a shard of boxwood stuck into the end of the jack to regulate its height.
Another thing you can see are markings on the face of the right-hand jack, a horizontal line just below the tongue. When these jacks were made, they were marked out with a scratch awl, and then individually cut out from a blank of wood. Although I am sure they were very efficient at making jacks, it was still a much more time consuming process than it is today. With my power tools and jigs and fixtures, I can prepare about a thousand jack bodies in a day, far outstripping what an individual could have done in eight hours in 1700. However, I still have to make the tongues and springs, and assemble and test them. It still takes a lot of time, because 90% of the process is handwork.
Leopoldo Franciolini was an infamous art dealer and forger who operated in Florence between 1890 and 1910. Not only did Franciolini make fake instruments of all kinds, he remanufactured antique harpsichords using parts of disparate instruments and decorated them with original and faked artwork. He was amazingly prolific, and he had spectacularly bad taste. At left is an instrument by Vincenzo Sodi that passed through Franciolini's hands. The artwork - the flower sprays and the landscapes, were snipped from existing sources, and pasted down on to the case and lids. The edges of the art bits were then covered by an impasto border. While the results superficially resemble an original, late 18th century work (see right) on close examination the Franciolini work is decidedly over-the-top, with a culturally inevitable fin-de-siecle appearance to the overall effect.
Well, what of it, you might ask. The reality is that Franciolini's efforts ruined what otherwise were irreplaceable historical records. He bilked many out of substantial sums on the pretext of supplying original antique musical instruments. I suppose in some instances the buyers didn't care - they simply wanted a decorative piece to go in the living room. But many of his "instruments" wound up in museums and in important private collections, and their presence muddied the organological water for decades. These days it seems easier to spot a Franciolini because his work has a particular quality about it. There are still forgers out there, individuals more skilled in replicating antique instruments than was Franciolini, and their work takes a good deal of skill to detect.
Mindful of the future when I am long gone and my instruments are all that is left to show the world what I did, I make sure to sign my work. Perhaps this edges on hubris, but there you are. Herbert Henkle, a very well known organologist, opined that Italian harpsichord makers between the 16th and 18th centuries signed only about two-thirds of their work, leaving one third unsigned. Indeed, even very well known makers sometimes like Cristofori didn't sign their instruments, leaving us to ferret out the clues in their work. Not only do I carve or paint my name on the nameboard, but I sign the soundboards with my signature. And I leave signatures on the inside, and on the bottom keylever and on a jack or two, and little messages under the soundboard. I'm a regular grafitti artist, but no one will see the grafitti until the instruments demand repair, hopefully not for many, many years.
