Cradle of Harmony Violin

Cradle of Harmony - corresponds to US Patent No. 8981, "Improvements in Violins" that Mount filed in June of 1852. Music and art were the twin interconnected passions of William Sidney Mount’s life. Born into a musical family, Mount’s preoccupation with American indigenous folk music became both a hobby and an important artistic muse. His first self-portrait, painted in 1828, shows the confident 21-year-old artist holding a flute behind a steady, purposeful gaze. The sources of Mount’s musical interests as a young man were many. William wrote that his father, Thomas Shepard Mount, was “passionately fond of music.” After Thomas’s death, in 1814, young William went to live with his uncle Micah Hawkins at the corner of Catherine Slip and Water Street, in Lower Manhattan. A general store operator by day, Micah also wrote operas, librettos, and played the flute, the violin, and a beautiful mahogany and rosewood pianoforte, the last of which is in the museum's collection. Young Mount lived with Micah for a little more than two years and certainly soaked up the atmosphere of his uncle’s creative environment. William later spent close to a decade of his life, from 1851 until 1858, in the design and mulit-stage refinement of this violin which he received a US patent for, an instrument he called “the Cradle of Harmony.”

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