WE Hill and Sons 12 Apostles Violin Cases
They don’t make the music, but they make sure the instrument reaches its audience. This London luthier created some of the most beautiful cases ever created.
When is a package or container almost as valuable as its contents? One imagines Fabergé eggs as an incomparable embodiment and celebration of the outdoors. On a much larger scale, some of the world’s great concert halls – the Concert Hall of the Congress and Culture Center in Lucerne, the Boston Symphony Hall, the Grosser Musikvereinssaal in Vienna, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Concert Hall of the City of the Opera of Tokyo and the City of Christchurch Hall Auditorium (New Zealand) come to mind – they are a kind of packaging for the impressive music created within its walls.
There are violin cases that are or were made to approximate the beauty and craftsmanship of the fine violins inside. Before the advent of scientifically driven case details (moisture gauges and the like), there were the 12 Apostles violin cases made by the WE Hill & Sons store in London. As the name implies, only a dozen were made (on New Bond Street, notably in the neighborhood of the Fabergé store), perhaps because few could afford the opulence and fine workmanship that went into building these cases.
Lest anyone question the value of a case, which produces no music at all, consider the fact that one of the 12 Apostles sold at auction in 2016 for $17,220.
The Hill Family Violin Shop, run by founder Willam Ebsworth Hill (1817-1895) was in existence for 105 years (1887-1992), but was actually based on a history of luthiers going back to Hill’s great-grandfather. The firm made both violins and cellos, but was respected for its work on repairs, bows, adjustments, identification and authentication, and ultimately for making fine cases.
The prized 12 Apostles were limited due to the extravagant time required to make them. The violin shop’s own brochure floridly described them: “In our opinion, the case containing such a fine work of art as a fine violin should be pleasing and, indeed, beautiful…we endeavor, by the use of select wood and ornamental inlaid edges, and the highest quality workmanship throughout, to make them as beautiful as possible, and receptacles worthy of fine violins.”
That workmanship included hand-made locks and bolts, a lined button (with cork) made to fasten the bow, and intricate wooden patterns inlaid with musical motifs. All 12 are different, at least one case has its own leather cover, case upon case, and several have held violins by legendary luthier Antonio Stradivarius.
Such a wealth of detail in one case is not out of place, considering the time and place of the most accomplished violin, viola, and cello players of the day. Large concerts were attended by the upper echelons of society in the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Higher still were the courts and palaces where the most sought after musicians of the Victorian era were to be found, can you say Paganini? – would be hired to entertain private audiences. The etiquette of that time was excruciatingly precise; the musician’s arrival must have clearly been an observed and choreographed moment. To be dressed in the finest clothing an exquisite violin case may also be necessary.
The fine instrument cases, clearly the work of artists, do not have a catalog raisonné like the work of acclaimed visual artists. So the precise whereabouts of all of Hill’s 12 Apostles is unclear (based on an internet search). The 2016 auction price could have raised the profile of this rarefied group enough that anyone lost in an attic or orchestra room could turn up in the future.