Lutes made by Laux Maler were highly prized by musicians in the seventeenth century. In April 1645
Constantijn Huygens tried to obtain a nine rib Laux Maler lute from
Jacques Gaultier, a lutenist at the court of
Charles I of England. Gaultier said there were only fifty extant, six in London, of medium size and not suitable to accompany a singer. Soon after Gaultier found one of the larger size, recently rebuilt in London by a Master Nichols. Huygens had the lute sent to him on approval, but did not buy it. In 1649 Charles I gave Gaultier another Laux Maler lute, formerly belonging to the royal lutenist John Ballard. Gaultier offered this lute to Huygens, and sent it to
The Hague but could not secure an expert recommendation for it from their mutual friend
Mary Woodhouse.[9]
^Willibald Leo Frhr v. Lütgendorff: Die Geigen und Lautenmacher vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. 4. Auflage, 1. Band. Frankfurter Verlags-Anstalt A.G., Frankfurt, 1922.
^Matthew Spring, 'A Goose Among Swans', The Lute in the Netherlands in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle, 2016), pp. 131, 137-40: Lisa Jardine, Temptation in the Archives (UCL: London, 2015), pp. 61-3.