A Stradivarius violin carved out in 1667 by Italian maker Antonio Stradivari hangs in a glass panel.

You can only take a hard look at it. You don't dare touch it or ask its price. Every Stradivarius has a soul, a mysterious life within it.

Mathias Boegner, a German-born violinist, takes the Stradivarius out, tunes it a little bit before playing the Bach Chaconne, arguably the greatest solo piece for the violin.

The sound is bright and it reverberates throughout the small room on the upper floor of Franke Violins at 119 Ramkhamhaeng Soi 12 in Hua Mak, Bang Kapi.

Boegner is an accomplished violinist. He makes quick adjustment to the violin.

This is an early Stradivarius, made when Stradivari was probably 22 years old and was about to set a new standard for violin-making.

It might not have the power of the later instruments, but it was warm to play with.

You have to dig in to "wake up" the Stradivarius to bring out the sound.

At that stage Stradivari was still several years before reaching his golden period of violin-making at the dawn of the 18th century.

The 1667 Stradivarius is beautiful to look at. Other rare violins are also on display at Franke Violins.

Andy Franke is the fourth generation of a violin-making and restoring family from Leipzig.

He is quite excited to have been able to put together more than 20 violins from the 18th, 19th and also 20th centuries for display to the Thai public.

But violin lovers better hurry, as the exhibition will end tomorrow.

Eric Blot, the French born violin-maker and appraiser, is in town with the collection. He is an expert on Italian-made violins. Before he made violins, but now he has no time for it.

His son is taking over from him as Eric is now focusing mainly on researching, cataloguing and appraising the Italian-made violins in his vast database and workshop in Cremona, Italy.

Blot started to study the 19th and 20th century Italian-made violins and gradually developed his expertise.

Now customers come over to let him look at their violins and ask for his opinion.

He issues certificates to authenticate them. He is also a violin dealer.

Italian-made violins are considered to be the highest quality of all due the country's long tradition, tracing back to Amati and Stradivari.

On display at the exhibition are a Poggi Bologna 1977, a Viovanni Francesco Pressenda Torino 1834, a Carlo Giuseppe Testore Milano 1696, a Tommaso Balestrieri Mantova 1775, a Vencenzo Sannino Napoli 1930-40, a Poggi Balogna 1971, a Felice Oliveri Torino 1874, a Rodolfo Fredi Roma 1926, a Plinio Michetti Torino 1936, a Sesto Rocchi Milano 1931, a Gaetano Pareschi Ferrara 1929, and a Romeo Antoniazzi Milano 1921.

Blot has numerous publications about Italian-made violins to his credit. He also takes time to lecture about Italian-made violins.

Blot said sometimes he can tell the maker of an Italian-made violin with just a glance, but other times he simply does not know and has to do research.

The problem is makers in the past put on, or changed, labels all the time.

The more research he does, the more fresh discoveries he makes. He now has more than 1,100 Italian violin-makers listed in his database. "And this number is growing all the time," he said.

This is a special field of study. Blot has to learn about the makers as individuals, the violins they made, the schools they belonged to, the cities they came from or where they acquired influence.

Blot would not say who his favourite violin-maker is, because no matter how good the maker was, he sometimes turned out not-so-good violins.

Blot normally closes his workshop at 7pm. But he will stay on for another two hours to study violins further or talk with customers who show him violins.

This exhibition is a rare event in Bangkok. Normally, Blot organises one in Japan, Korea or Taiwan. But on coming to Bangkok, he has realised that Thailand is now becoming a big market for violins.