Laux Maler or Laux Mahler or Lucas Maller (1485–1552) was a renaissance
luthier
A luthier ( ; AmE also ) is a craftsperson who builds or repairs string instruments that have a neck and a sound box. The word "luthier" is originally French and comes from the French word for lute. The term was originally used for makers o ...
specialising in lutes, from
Füssen,
Germany. He worked in
Bologna,
Italy.
Lutes made by Laux Maler were highly prized by musicians in the seventeenth century. In April 1645
Constantijn Huygens tried to obtain a nine rib Laux Maler lute from
Jacques Gaultier
Jacques Gaultier (or Gauterius, Gouterus, Goutier, Gautier, Gautier d'Angleterre, also James Gwaltier) (born ca. 1600, fl. 1617 – 1652) was a French Baroque lutenist and composer. He was not related to the composers and lutenists Denis Gaultier ...
, a lutenist at the court of
Charles I of England. Gaultier said there were only fifty extant, six in London, of medium size and not suitable to accompany a singer. Soon after Gaultier found one of the larger size, recently rebuilt in London by a Master Nichols. Huygens had the lute sent to him on approval, but did not buy it. In 1649 Charles I gave Gaultier another Laux Maler lute, formerly belonging to the royal lutenist John Ballard. Gaultier offered this lute to Huygens, and sent it to
The Hague but could not secure an expert recommendation for it from their mutual friend
Mary Woodhouse
Mary Woodhouse (d. 1656), musician and correspondent of Constantijn Huygens, was the daughter of Henry Woodhouse (MP) of Hickling and Waxham, and Anne Bacon, daughter of Sir Nicholas Bacon. (Some sources say she was a daughter of the Woodhouse fa ...
.
[Matthew Spring, 'A Goose Among Swans', ''The Lute in the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century'' (Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle, 2016), pp. 131, 137-40: Lisa Jardine, ''Temptation in the Archives'' (UCL: London, 2015), pp. 61-3.]
References
Lute makers
German luthiers
1485 births
1552 deaths
People from Füssen
Businesspeople from Bologna
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