Our Newest Niel Gow Pochette

This pochette (kit fiddle) is destined to a music store in Japan. Here are some photos of the instrument with the simple period-appropriate leather-laced felt bag. A period-appropriate Spanish cedar case is available (about $400) and highly-recommended. One of our modern Extreme Pochette Cases can also be used if you don't mind your early music enthusiast friends seeing you pull a 1780s instrument out of a titanium-colored ABS case.

Click on any of the thumbnails for full-size views.

 

This instrument is a pochette (i.e. pocket fiddle) of the type built in Scotland in the mid to late 18th century. Unlike early pochettes, these tended to be called "kits" (as in kitten) by the English and the Scots. Their sound is brash and very LOUD for a 3 inch wide instrument. The playable string length is the same as a regular fiddle. The instrument is transitional between Baroque and modern instruments. For instance, the neck is angled back, but not as much as a modern instrument (earlier Baroque instruments had their necks set with no angle-back...the fingerboard was tilted back with a wedge between the neck and fingerboard). This instrument, has a bassbar and a sound-post like a modern instrument.

Did Niel Gow play an instrument like this?: We don't know for sure, but historic records indicate that he was known to have played a kit and the instrument which ours replicates is of the same period during which Gow (one of the originators, the father in the opinion of many, of Scottish Highland style fiddle playing as we know it today). Thomas Jefferson, known for being President of the U.S., definitely played a pochette, very likely of this type owing to its high volume, in the pub sessions he regularly took part in in his later years.

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