Henry Ford’s Classical Violins

Violin, 1744 Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu Cremona, Italy. 33.250.1

The Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu (1698-1744) violin is the finest of Henry Ford’s violins—in fact, experts consider it to be among the ten finest violins by this esteemed violinmaker.  The craft of violinmaking reached artistic heights in the 17th and 18th centuries in the workshops of Guarneri and Antonio Stradivari.  Ford’s Guarneri is called “The Doyen” because it was owned in the late 19th century by M. Louis Doyen, a French amateur violinist.