598 - Guitar Lute with Carved Rosette, Walter Wild Markneukirchen, with Carrying Cord

Guitar Lute with Carved Rosette, Walter Wild Markneukirchen, with Carrying Cord Wood, textile. Guitar lute with a vaulted body built of ribs and a flat soundboard with double edge inlay. The sound hole formed as a carved, pierced rosette with vine leaves and grapes, below it a carved bridge with leaf-shaped ends. Fingerboard with frets, the pegbox slotted, with a carved rosette at the head and three tuning machines with pale buttons on each side. Inside on a label in Fraktur type inscribed „A. Walter Wild, Zupfinstrumentenbau, Markneukirchen". With a carrying cord. Played condition commensurate with age, two strings missing, scratches, rubbed areas. L. 94.5 cm The guitar lute combines the bulbous lute body with the string length and stringing of the guitar. It appeared around 1900 and became the instrument of the youth and Wandervogel movement because it was light, portable and could accompany singing without prior training; the woven carrying cord belongs to this equipment. Markneukirchen in the Saxon Vogtland was the centre of German instrument making, with a multitude of small workshops working for the mail order trade. The carved rosette in place of an open sound hole is a mark of the better versions.