The production date of this cello has always been a matter of controversy and the issue is far from being solved. The instrument bears an original label stating a date of 1684, but when the violin maker Charles-Eugène Gand saw the cello in Paris in 1871, he recorded it with the date 1709. Moreover, in a book by William Henley, it is listed as having been manufactured in 1736. The same date was claimed in the catalogue for the exhibition in Isola Bella on the Italian Lake Maggiore in 1963 as well as in the work of Herbert K. Goodkind Nevertheless, Ernest N. Doring dated the cello 1692, and added that the sources referring to ‘1736’ were incorrect.
More information: Antonio Stradivari Set 1, Volume 1, Page 212