Fine instruments have held their purchasing power across every monetary system since the 1600s. They are sourced, placed and conserved by Kleos, in partnership with Clarmond Wealth.
When the leadership of international money changes hands, from Amsterdam to London and London to New York, most assets are repriced violently. A small set of real stores of value pass through each transition with their relative purchasing power intact. Fine instruments are one of them.
Read the full thesisA three-hundred-year price history that has shifted seamlessly from gulden to pounds to dollars.
For nearly 300 years an A-list instrument has cost roughly one professional's annual salary; still true today.
Unlike metal or canvas, an instrument is a partnership between craft and player. Placement builds provenance, and provenance builds value.
Measured against gold and against the great homes at the centre of each empire, the fine instrument keeps returning to the same relationship. Most strikingly, today's instrument to property ratio of 4:1 is exactly what Antonio Stradivari himself paid for his house in Cremona.
A Stradivari could be bought for 2oz of gold, a professional's yearly salary. Stradivari's own home cost 8oz, setting a 4:1 ratio of fine instrument to real estate. The Dutch East India Company, worth $7tr in today's money, dominated, and later vanished.
Under British money a Stradivari was worth 235oz of gold, two years of a professional's salary. A house in Belgravia, the heart of the new empire, stood at 470oz. As sterling later waned, the instrument adopted the US dollar seamlessly, as it had shifted currency a century before.
Through Bretton Woods, the eurodollar credit bubble and today's Treasury-collateralised system, the instrument held its two-years-of-salary relationship. Jackie Kennedy's Fifth Avenue floor, 7,100oz of gold in 1965, is worth less today, measured in any store of value. The instrument is not.
Access to the "great four" (Stradivari, Amati, Guarneri and Guadagnini), other Italian maestros, and today's finest contemporary masters.
Through our affiliated workshop, we can commission new master instruments built in the Cremonese tradition: tomorrow's heirlooms.
We place instruments with leading players and orchestras to deepen provenance, and manage their conservation as historical assets.
With Clarmond Wealth, our regulated partner, investors access the asset class through managed accounts and fund structures.
A dedicated fine-instrument advisory: sourcing and commissioning, placing instruments with the right players, and caring for them across generations.
Explore the instruments →An advisory boutique for families and high-net-worth individuals, authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Conduct Authority, structuring access to stores of value.
The asset-allocation case →We work with families, single-family offices and institutions exploring real assets with the duration to cross generations.
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