On my workbench today: half a bass with a note reading “Johann Stephan Thumhard.” The handwritten date is barely legible. A bit of UV light helps me make it out and reveals what might be a “16.” This suggests the bass was made a year before his death.
The Thumharts (Dumbhart) were a large family of violin makers who lived and worked in Bavaria (Amberg, Straubing, Ingolstadt, Munich) during the 18th and 19th centuries. Lütgendorff writes about Johann Stephan Thumhard:
Thumhardt, Joh. Stephan — Straubing. *1749, † 26. Dezember 1817
According to the Straubing trade register, he established himself there in 1769 as a violin and string maker, married in 1773, and handed over his workshop and estate to his son Alois in 1817. He may have been a pupil of Buchstädter, whose work he imitated quite closely. His better violins display a characteristic narrow model with elongated scrolls and sound quite good; however, his brown-yellow or brown varnish has mostly lost its luster. His gravestone still stands in the St. Peter’s Cemetery in Straubing, and on it one reads: “He was esteemed by his fellow citizens, and posterity will still praise him for his works of art. R. J. P.” The twelve violins he allegedly made for a wealthy connoisseur and eccentric are considered his finest. For the first, he received one ducat, which seemed too little to him, yet he said nothing when he was immediately commissioned to make a second, even better one. The customer then paid two ducats for it and demanded an even better one, for which he paid three ducats, and so on up to twelve ducats. Because of their number—twelve—these violins are called “Apostle Violins”; one of them (from 1793) is still owned today by District Court Judge F. Ebner in Straubing. In the same collection is a viola from 1782; a viola from 1809 is owned by musician Schmid in Straubing. The church choir at St. Jakob there also owns two violins from 1814 and 1815, as well as a particularly beautiful bass (1815) by Stephan Th. His violins have already fetched quite good prices, and his basses even higher ones.
