A violin by Antonio Stradivari

John David Loder, from whom the violin first received a name, owned the 1729 Strad in Bath, England, in the first half of the 19th century. Loder was an English violinist, leader of the orchestra of the Theatre Royal in Bath, as well as the Three Choirs, Yorkshire, Gloucester, and music festival orchestras. He was also a professor of violin at the Royal Academy of Music. 

Loder sold the now ‘ex-Loder’ to Mr Ellis of Chester, who owned it until 1886, when it was bought by Capt. Christopher Baldock Cardew through W.E. Hill & Sons. Captain Cardew bought the violin for his daughter, Mary Scott, an amateur violinist and wife of Major General Douglas Alexander Scott, one of the highest ranking officers in the British army at the beginning of the 20th century.

In 1918, four years before her death, Mary Scott sold the ‘ex-Loder’ to Robert Bower of Minehead, Somerset, who owned no fewer than 24 Strads at the peak of his collection. William Ernest Reid Innes, from whom the violin received the other part of its name, bought the violin through Hart & Son in 1918 and, after his death c.1931, it was inherited by his widow, Ella Clarissa Innes. Ella sold the Strad through Christie’s to Francis Rudolph Phillips for his wife Eileen Cicely Phillips OBE, chairman of the Society for the Oversea Settlement of British Women. Eileen gave the violin to Anne Eyre as a gift and she owned it until 1969, when it was bought by Enoch Davies of Leigh-on-Sea, Essex who owned the violin until his death in 1977, at which point it passed to his family. Sotheby’s sold the violin in 1988 to Eugene Sârbu, with whom it remains.