If you find a violin with the label "Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis" don't get excited too quickly. It is nearly certain that it is not genuine.

     Sometimes violin makers who would put the names of other makers on their own violins to increase the price. Also restorers often use labels, sometimes genuine, but often forged, in instruments, and there is a big business in labels.

     Violin experts do not judge the value of a violin by its label. The label may even be missing from a genuine violin; it is almost certainly to be found on a forgery. A label might read:

The name Cremonensis will probably include the long s that looks rather like an f:   Cremonenfis. This might be followed by circles with crosses, initials or other signs. These are made to be completed at the time the instrument is finished. The violin maker did not wish to have new labels printed each year, so the rest of the date is written by hand.

      A completed label should read "... Anno 1715" or "... Anno 1707", or at least an year of the 18th century. Some of these violins cannot be called fakes. For example a label like:

This is more like a joke than a forgery, like finding a coin with the abbreviation B. C. stamped on it. Stradivarius never learnt English, and all his labels were printed in Latin.

      If you find such a violin should you try to find out if it is genuine? You may if you like. I would not invest a lot of time and money in doing so, but stranger things have happened.