The Golden Age of English Cello Making

Thomas William Kennedy was born in 1784, and came from a line of violin makers. He was the eldest son of John Kennedy, whose uncle and teacher was Alexander, a pupil of Nathaniel Cross working in Market Street, which coincidentally is now Great Titchfield Street, where Ingles & Hayday is located. Thomas was apprenticed to Thomas Powell, who trained with another great cello-maker, William Forster, with whom Kennedy also worked briefly from 1802. Two years later Kennedy set up his own business at 16 Princes Street, near the Bank of England. Kennedy was clearly ambitious from the outset, and he employed James Brown as an assistant. Brown is credited with a lot of the early output, and this is to an extent borne out by known examples of Browns’ independent work. The influence of Forster is hard to detect, but Simon Andrew Forster, the son of William Forster junior, noted that Kennedy ‘was more indebted to his father [than Forster] for his knowledge of the business, and became a great and good workman…exceedingly quick and rapid in every department’. Kennedy repaid his dues to the Forster family by taking on the young William IV (the son of William junior) as an apprentice, who apparently had a rather wild temperament, and soon left the trade altogether to join a theatrical troupe.

Shortly after 1823 the business moved again to 364 Oxford Street, where this particular cello was made, according to the undated label it bears. It was made on the familar Amati model with long ‘C’ bouts, and is an instrument most certainly of the best class of Kennedy’s workmanship, cleanly purfled and well-finished, made with good quality wood. The back is of two pieces of maple cut a little off the quarter with soft flame running horizontally, although it rises a little on the centre right side. The arching is also Amatise in form, with a deep edge-flute rising to a well-rounded centre. The ribs are made from the same wood, while the scroll, as is typical with English cellos in general, is of plain, more easily-carved maple. It is of the classic Kennedy form, with the small eye slightly raised and set back from the centre of the volute, and the undercuts smoothly scraped and slightly concave. The pegbox sides are swept sharply back from the nut, another very English feature that Kennedy dispensed with in the Stradivari models which he began in this period.