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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hi, my name is Robert Lamb, and this is The Artifact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind,

focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments in time.

During a recent family trip to Arizona,

I found myself strolling the halls of the fantastic musical instrument museum

in Phoenix once more.

If you've never been to it, I highly recommend

to visit. The museum features thousands of musical instruments from all around the world to illustrate

the rich diversity of musical instrument design and innovation, as well as the universality of music.

And via a headset and video displays all over the place, you get to see and hear many of these instruments in their traditional use.

From Polynesian nose flutes to DJ Kuberts' custom QFO turntable mixer, there's a little something in there for everybody.

I snapped numerous photos and took several notes for possible artifact episodes here on the show. And today I want to talk about the

Spatzir-Stagga, a late 19th century walking stick fiddle for Matnorkkern in Saxony, Germany. This is a famous musical instrument-making region.

So feel free to look up images of the cane, but I'm going to go ahead and describe it for you here as well.

A short wooden walking stick with a small functional four-string fiddle built into one side of it.

There's also room for a fitted bow with which to play it.

Now, I wondered at the time, as I was looking at this in the museum,

if there was some sort of panel that could cover up or even hide the fiddle portion of the cane.

And while there wasn't such a panel on display at the musical instrument museum, subsequent research revealed that such panels existed.

So, yes, you could have a completely hidden fiddle in your cane.

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