I have dealt with a guy in Taiwan who produces very similar inlay to this, in so much that a lot of his work is (i will be nice) very thorougher. In fact, what we have above could well be an example of his work.
I think he has the Ebay tag "Inlay Artist", and my own experience is, as long as you accept before you bid that in this world, you only ever really get what you pay for, he has proven to be a fair trader.
This stuff from Taiwan is incredibly cheap to buy when compared to what you would expect to pay for similar standard in the west. An example, I bought a set of bone bridge pins with abalone dot inlay for around $6.00, these look really good and are in fact real bone, the trade off, I had to chuck them in a drill and lathe them down to fit the bridge of the guitar I wanted to fit then to. They had a thicker tapper and higher collar than required.
If I payed myself, I guess I would have been better to pay $28.00 for a set on-line, good thing I am cheap
Another example, I had to repair a 1981 Ibanez 12 string after a PO had attempted to replace the original tuners with a full size set of M6 tuners.
Not only did these over size tuners throw the balance of the headstock way out, it would appear from the attached images, they also required the use of a rabid ferret to re drill the post holes.
Any how, it was obvious that after re-shaping the headstock to get rid of the damaged timber, and repairing and re-drilling the over size post holes, this thing would need a headstock overlay.
This is were our friend in Taiwan comes in. $9.00 got me an inlaid rosewood headplate. I can confirm that this was no overlay, the graved gold MOP may well be thin but, it is without a doubt inlaid.
The "only get what you pay for" factor lay in the fact that the rosewood into which the shell had been worked had not been machined flat before work commenced, so there were a few dips and wallows that needed to be levelled out.
This required a little work with a scrapper to put right, which did unfortunately decrease the definition of the graving. But all said and done, as you can see from the photos below, things turned out OK.
So whilst we in the west may find the above instrument to be over the top, it must be remembered that this work was probably done by a craftsman of incredible skill who design was no doubt influenced by a cultural up bringing that we simply do not understand any better than he or she can understand ours
Cheers All
Kim
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Kim, stunning repair, very creative. Any idea what the oriental characters say? The doves are very artistic. Great job.
just as long as it's not about me Mum 