The Cozio Archive
Welcome to Cozio, the world’s largest reference resource for buyers, sellers and connoisseurs of fine stringed instruments and bows.
Founded in 2003 as a public registry of iconography, provenance and pricing information for historical stringed instruments, Cozio encompasses over 36,000 individual instruments and bows by over 3,500 makers. It is also the most comprehensive online source for maker biographies and provenance information, and contains over 57,000 historical auction prices.
Although most of Cozio is available to the public by subscription, it also contains photographs, documents and records of instruments and bows that are accessible only by request. If you would like information about any item that is not publicly available, please contact us.
The Cozio Carteggio
Latest Feature
Back Stories: A data-driven look at wood choice
Every time I take a trans-continental day-flight, I try to write a Carteggio. The lack of distraction is sublime and wonderfully productive. Today, I’ve written some observations I made from data we extracted from the Cozio archive about a year ago about makers' tendencies and preferences regarding wood choice. I know it’s nerdy but I find this sort of exercise fascinating: expertise in the 21st century is truly a 360 degree adventure, the more ways we can study makers and instruments, the more we know. The following is a lot of data. I hope this makes sense, the air is thin up here.
By Jason PriceGenerally speaking, instrument backs are made of maple. And most of the time, they are either in one piece, or in two pieces with a joint down the middle. Maple was used from the earliest days of violin making because of its superb acoustic properties … and also because it’s pretty. The distinctive stripes that […]
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