Having found the treble viol by John Hoskins (1609) to be a very successful model, I decided to enlarge the outline to make a tenor. I constructed it with a bent front and a string length of 56.5 cm, which works very well with all gut stringing. The instrument pictured below has a particularly pretty piece of ash for the fingerboard and tailpiece and holly pegs, both from a local source.

This is a tenor viol based on a small ‘division bass’ by John Rose from 1598 that is now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The string length of my version is 56.5 cm. The instrument pictured has English Walnut on the fingerboard and tail-piece, and the pegs and nut are of boxwood. The instrument is available as pictured with an open scroll, carved head or with purfling ornaments front, back and sides like the original.