Thanks, Martina.

Metal roses were used in Dutch harpsichords from the 17thc.  (And are being
made for harpsichord makers today).  My own anon and fairly horrible guittar
has a wooden one, but I looked at a Gibson in Dublin National Museum last
week and it looked cast, and quite definitely mercury-gilt.  Stamped roses
could have been available at the end of the century, and would have been
lighter in weight, but look identical from outside the instrument!

See the V&A catalogue etc., for examples of guittars with pegs, and
guitar-style machines.  Incidentally they own a Portuguese guitar (J.V. da
Silva, Lisbon) with Gibson-style shoulders.


On instrument names, no one has yet mentioned Praetorius' Klein Englische
zitterlein, the guitar-tuned cittern which he raves about.  Sir Peter
Leycester writes of it in 1656 as known to him in his youth, "-we now
usually call a Gitterne, which indeed is onely a Treble Psithyrne,-".

Peter



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