Another odd headstock repair - and loss

[Richard500]

I just lost the bidding on this Art Nouveau tour de force on GW to a last minute sniper. The headstock broke long ago and was sandwiched with a plate on top bolted to the back cover. For unknown reasons, I wanted to own this thing. The only comparable image I found was long ago, here, of a 12 string. Nobody could identify it then. Part of the appeal was that there was surely more wonderful artwork under that plate!
Although the mando peak was solidly in the Art Nouveau era, and Gibson’s decoration probably derived from it, I hadn’t seen anything like this. Anybody know anything?

[sunburst]

...Anybody know anything?

Only this:
The design is surely not copyrighted and there are plenty of custom luthiers and inlay professionals who could replicate that design for you. Maybe a little more expensive...

[Jim Garber]

I owned that same bowlback with the harpist inlaid on the pickguard. It didn't have the inlay on the fretboard. I have also seen a few more of those recently but none have that fretboard either. I could be wrong but I am guessing that that fretboard was done more recently by a modern artisan who was riffing off the pickguard inlay.

BTW I believe that there were pearl suppliers who made inlays for sale to instrument shops. Louis Handel of the famous Handel tuners was one such shop in NYC. This is why you may very well see the same elaborate inlays (butterflies, leaves, flowerpots, etc.) on different shop's instruments even on banjos, guitars, mandolins.

Mine (former) is in the first two photos and there are a few from one that sold on eBay last year. By the shape of the headstock and pickguard I would guess Lyon & Healy was the source.

[Jim Garber]

I take it back. On further searching through my files I found an example of what the basket-case ShopGoodWill looked like originally. BTW you saved yourself paying really stupid money (more than $432) for that one. Consider yourself truly lucky to escape from that nightmare. Mine was in great shape and I don't think I sold it for anywhere that much. It was a nice mandolin but still a bowlback and an unlabelled one at that.

Here is the other one sold in 2015. I believe that the pearl on the fretboard and on the headstock were all from a pearl supplier. I doubt they were done one-off just for this mandolin (or the SGW one).

This was not work done by any of the brilliant pearl artisans like Icilio Consalvi on presentation banjos of turn of the last century.

[Richard500]

Thanks, Jim. L&H is a good bet. The identical one that turned up here, a decade ago, the 12, was a deceased grandpa’s original, someone who had it a long time according to the OP, so recent origin of the flying woman is unlikely. As the substrate is a high nominal quality one, I was theorizing that a pair, or a limited number might have been exposition or presentation models. This happens in tools, which I collect. A theory.
I agree that when drugs reinvigorated Art Nouveau in the 60s, someone could have invented the design for a poster!

[Richard500]

Jim, message tag. Thanks so much for searching your files. Must have been just an available, period version if we see three of them. I’m far less disappointed! By the way, SGW lately is turning up prices that seem, to someone not in the business, really crazy, considering that it’s all blind, non-return stuff. However, unlike better platforms like the classifieds here, something misidentified and interesting can turn up, and I enjoy repairs. Right now, there’s an eight string, banjo-bodied “ukelele” there.
I’ve been lucky and happy with a couple of (likely) Mexican mandolins of minimal market value that happen to sound good. One even had colored ribbons attached.