VERY old citole

Craftsmen of old knew the importance to detail, look at this insane carving on this citole! From the british museum...

Think of all the dust it would collect if you had it at home.

The music I can make with my citole isn't appealing at all, but I have it with me at all times regardless.

Thanks for sharing this.

I've never seen one of those before - I agree that the carving is evident of a great level of attention to detail - I shudder to think about the time investment and to have the simple luxury of being 'allowed' that much time to work on something like that -

My life is such that this would get put aside as 'yet another half-done, abandoned project' mostly due to the rest of my life distracting me with 'obligations' that consume all of my other time...

I know it's impossible to make something really great in a short time window, but ideally for me to build an instrument, it needs to literally be a 'weekend project' - and my expectations are low for something that would even be worthy of talking about in the end - and just a disappointment

That would have been done by a specialist carver or even carvers i.e. more than one. In previous centuries specialised trades were protected and the guild system meant that if you were trained as a wood carver, wood carving was pretty much all you were going to do. Years ago I visited the Victoria and Albert museum and saw a stunning guitar made by Jose Pages. The inlay on the soundboard was done to an incredible standard. Some time later I was somewhat disappointed to find out that the inlay was almost certainly done by specialised marquetiers and inlay craftsmen, not Jose Pages. I guess that was a product of my 20 th century view on how instruments should be made. They were much more pragmatic and had less romantic notions.