A violinist has been reunited with her £35,000 violin after it fell off a moving coach and ended up being sold to a pawnbroker for £35.
Morven Bryce, from Chesterfield, Derbyshire, was touring the UK with BBC Folk Award winner Jon Borden and Remnant Kings when her 1996 John Dilworth violin went missing from the luggage section of the bus on November last year.
The coach driver told her that on the previous evening while on the way to the way to the O2 Arena bus park, an alarm went off alerting him that the door to the luggage area had suddenly opened.
Morven Bryce, from Chesterfield, is delighted to reunited with her Violin, a 1996 John Dilworth, six weeks after it went missing
Mrs Bryce (L) picking up her violin from Richard Newman at the Edmonton branch of Cash Converters
The driver checked the area and thought nothing seemed to have gone missing.
A devastated Mrs Bryce went back to the O2 Arena area to search for the missing violin, which also included a gold mounted Finkel bow and French silver mounted bow.
She even contacted UK Highways and the local authority in Greenwich to see if anything had been handed in or any wooden debris has been found.
‘I was absolutely beside myself when I realised it was missing,’ said Mrs Bryce, who has been a professional violinist for 25 years.
‘Jon Boden, who I was touring with, had the idea to go scour the area around the O2 in a taxi. We didn’t have much time as we were playing at Scala that evening.
‘It was all non-stop. The taxi driver was great. He went round every possible route the bus could have gone. There was still no sign of it and the show must go on so Jon lent me one of his violins.’
The 1996 John Dilworth means a great deal to Mrs Bryce and is an instrument she has used to lead the Tippet Quartet, Edinburgh Quartet, BBC Concert Orchestra, London Soloists Chamber Orchestra and The Sound of Music in London’s West End.
Mrs Bryce was touring the UK with BBC Folk Award winner Jon Borden and Remnant Kings when her 1996 John Dilworth violin went missing from the luggage section of the bus on November last year
She has also used it to perform on a number of Hollywood film scores and pop tracks played live on BBC Radio 2, Radio 3, and Radio 4.
Mrs Bryce, 47, a mother-of-two, launched an appeal to find the violin on Facebook that was shared by hundreds of people.
But the real breakthrough came when a fellow musician Ben Nicholls advised her to contact pawnbrokers Cash Converters. He thought that maybe whoever found the item might try to sell the violin.
Mrs Bryce got in touch with Cash Converters, who were more than happy to help by alerting all its branches regarding the missing instrument.
She said: ‘I was going around contacting antique dealers and sellers in the industry to see if it had been sold. It was double bass player Ben Nicholls who told me to try Cash Convertors. I really didn’t think anything would come from it really so when they got in touch, I was really surprised.’
Amazingly Mrs Bryce received an email on January 4, six weeks since it first went missing, from the manager of Cash Converters in Edmonton, North London, Richard Newman, to say he believed he had her violin.
The branch had two men come into store the very same day looking to sell the violin for just £35.
Mr Newman asked to the men to provide ID and they both offered UK driving licences.
He looked up the the violin and bows against police databases to see if they had been listed as stolen.
The violin and two bows displayed no serial numbers, and did not register as stolen so he was able to approve the purchase.
Little did the men know that they actually had a very special violin and bows thought to be worth around £35,000.
Once the men had left, Mr Newman inspected the great craftsmanship of the violin and noticed the John Dilworth label.
Mr Newman decided to pursue further checks, so he researched the name ‘John Dilworth’ and discovered he was a highly regarded master restorer of antique and expensive string instruments, specialising in restoring instruments worth tens of thousands.
Mrs Bryce added: ‘I am ever so grateful to Richard Newman and everyone at Cash Converters. I had given up hope of ever seeing the violin again.
I was absolutely beside myself when I realised it was missing
‘Even when he sent the email, I still didn’t believe it was mine until Richard sent the photos.
‘When I went to pick it up, everyone in the store was so happy and pleased to have helped reunite me with the violin. Richard was just such a wonderful person. It demonstrated to me the great things about us as human beings.’
Mr Newman said: ‘I feel truly honoured to have been involved in such a beautiful story and through working for Cash Converters I have been able to repatriate a stunning musical instrument to its rightful owner.
‘It’s a great feeling to have been an integral part in a mechanism that has united an amazing lady with her treasured item.’