“There, for example, is one of Sebastian Klotz’s finest violins.” Pierre Franck is the owner of La Petite Boutique des violons, rue de Rome, in Paris. A few square meters which contain treasures, sometimes more than a century old, like this instrument signed Klotz, German luthier of the 18th century. But in a sector where thefts and traffic are increasing, you have to know how to open your eyes to the second-hand instruments that are in transit. Especially since these instruments can be worth millions of euros for the rarest.
So, when a customer walks through the door of his store with a case matching the curves of the double bass or the violin they contain to offer to sell it, Pierre Franck quickly spots if it has been stolen. “When you see an instrument arrive, explains this former professional musician, so as not to be suspicious, it has to come out of an attic with the period box, the period strings, the bow that goes with it. And let us feel that indeed, it is something that has been dormant for 100 or 150 years. Or else the owner has to say to me, ‘Listen, I myself have played this instrument for 40 years’. And that is easy to verify: all they have to do is play it. Or finally: ‘It was my mother’s’. In this case, the era of the box, the rosin or the archers, everything must be coherent.”
When in doubt about the seller, Pierre Franck uses Anipo, an online instrument identification platform to check if the violin already has an owner. Anipo was created by soprano Cyrille Gerstenhaber five years ago. “We all love our instrument and we generally don’t want to play on a stolen instrument at all, because we imagine what it would do to us if we had ours stolen. If we can identify a instrument anywhere in the world, we won’t be able to resell it, so we’ll stop stealing them.” Each year, calls for help from musicians multiply on social networks after the theft of their instrument.
To identify stolen instruments, in the absence of serial numbers, we most often rely on photos, for example of the grain of the wood, the varnish or the shape of its curves: “That’s how we just returned two stolen Martin collectible guitars to their owner and that made us super happy!”welcomes Cyrille Gerstenhaber.
The Anipo platform has also launched a kind of “Blablacar” of instruments, to connect traveling musicians and avoid going through the services of transport companies. It also offers anti-theft labels to attach to the case, to deter potential theft perpetrators.