The Impostor Strads

When Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona, Italy in 1737, he left behind him an estimated 1,100 masterfully constructed stringed instruments, of which perhaps 600 that have any claim to his name exist today. Every violin virtuoso, concertmaster and well-heeled amateur in the world has wanted to own an instrument by the famed Cremona fiddlemaker. The supply, while never plentiful, has surprisingly never been exhausted, and last week the proceedings of a Swiss court pointed to the reason why: buyers of supposed Strads and other instruments with great Cremona labels have been the victims of a traffic in fake violins.

The man responsible for last week's court action is an Italian violin connoisseur named Giovanni Iviglia. Twenty years ago, an exhibition of old-master violins was held in Cremona, and of the 2,000 which Expert Iviglia now says were offered from all parts of the world, only 40 proved to be genuine. Believing that the center of a fake violin trade was Switzerland, Iviglia, with the blessings of the Italian government, set up an "Advisory Bureau for Purchasers and Owners of Italian String Instruments" in Zurich.

With the aid of the local police laboratory, his bureau examined hundreds of violins brought to it by worried buyers. Most of the instruments had telltale modern coats of lacquer or labels with inks and paper of recent manufacture. In one violin, the police lab even found particles of nylon. A concertmaster brought Iviglia a "Stradivarius" (for which he had paid $13,000) with a label reading "Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis faciebat Anno 1703." Underneath, another label was found reading "Pietro Antonio della Costa, Treviso, Anno 1764." Both labels were false. A Swiss collector brought in a 1716 "Stradivarius" for which she had paid $30,000, was informed by Iviglia's office that she owned "a very handsome instrument dating back to about 1800 and worth not more than $4,000 or $5,000."

Iviglia painstakingly built up a case against famed Bern Dealer Henry Werro, 67-year-old former president of the Swiss Violin Dealers Association. Werro hastily repurchased five violins and a cello from angry customers for a total of about $60,000 before he was brought to trial on 20-odd charges of forgery of names and labels. The top violin traders in Paris, London, Amsterdam and New York, who have for years passed on the authenticity of old violins, almost unanimously supported Werro. Seventy-year-old Albert Phillips-Hill of London's sacrosanct W.E. Hill & Sons, and himself known in the trade as "The Pope," called the work of Iviglia's bureau a "scandal."

But last week, with Iviglia's charges supported by court-appointed scientists and "style experts," the court found Dealer Werro guilty of "falsifying labels'' and "forgery in two cases," fined him 5,000 Swiss francs, sentenced him to a one-year conditional jail term. The decision, said Investigator Iviglia. would knock the bottom out of the old-violin market.

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