> Actually, thought, what I was trying to get at is this; who was buying > those hundreds of lutes under construction, or at least with parts > made/bought, in the death inventories, and how much were they paying > for them?
Customers were buying the lutes, just as today. it could have been individuals, or perhaps distributors. But, many more played lute in the renaissance than in our modern times, obviously; so, there was a larger market, with high demand. The customers probably paid the agreed upon price (I haven't a clue to the relative value in today's market). > Another thing: IMO, an artist lute builder doesn't have hundreds of > bellies, worked and unworked, lying around (in Venetian boxes!) when he > dies, even if he's been sick and not working for awhile. Sounds like a > factory to me! Yes they were actual lute factories. I understand (but do not have the actual information at hand) that they ordered "parts", such as necks, pegs, etc. Some parts were made by the builder, and assembled in the ";factory". With large inventories of these "parts", it is obvious that many, many were build from one shop. ed Edward Martin 2817 East 2nd Street Duluth, Minnesota 55812 e-mail: [email protected] voice: (218) 728-1202 http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1660298871&ref=name http://www.myspace.com/edslute To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
