Perhaps modern luthiers don't attach these pegs because they don't work so well with modern clothing?
I haven't tried it, but I guess that the usefulness and comfort of hanging a lute off your button will be strongly dependant on your clothes. For much of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries most people were wearing tightly fitting, strong, stiff clothing, with many buttons down the front. This would give a solid panel to hang a lute off without distorting the clothing in uncomfortable ways, and a choice of many attachment points to get just the right height. I can't imagine it working quite so comfortably with a modern shirt. About scratching: buttons on surviving 16th and 17thC clothing are, more often than not, wooden forms covered in thread - not likely to scratch varnish much. best wishes, Katherine Davies --- David Rastall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > We all have our favorite ways of supporting the lute > while we play, > but this particular strap/loop method requires an > addition to the > construction of the lute: a second strap peg fitted > near the base of > the neck where the neck meets the body. > > I've never seen a lute actually from the 16th or > 17th century, but > I've seen plenty of historical copies of particular > lutes from the > renaissance/Baroque made by present-day luthiers, > and not one has had > such a strap peg . I've never even heard of it as > an "added > feature." Surely if this strap/gut loop method of > supporting the > lute was widely used, then at least some of the > surviving lutes would > have had these pegs in them. Wouldn't the pegs have > been included in > renaissance/Baroque luthiers' plans and drawings? I > guess what I'm > saying is, with all the historical copies that have > been cranked out > over the last 30 years or so, why has this > strap/loop thing not been > common knowledge, and widely used today as it was > back then: > particularly since there should be some evidence on > early lutes in > the form of the extra strap peg? > > David Rastall > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
