[cannam]

(Amateur cellist)

Instinctively I find this absurd too. I always thought it was funny that, at least at the level of student instruments, the more you spend, the more beaten-up your new instrument looks. Basic ones have an even spray varnish (which I generally quite like). My slightly better* Chinese factory instrument is antiqued to the extent of having a more worn-looking patch where the hand rests when playing in higher positions, as if to suggest decades of performance as a soloist. It's nonsense.

But plainly people do like this and makers do make it. See e.g. the instruments at https://www.myluthier.co/category/violins (I can't afford to shop there, I just picked it because they have pretty preview images) which stand as quite good evidence against any suggestion that "reputable luthiers would never". Yes at some point you just have to make a living, but there's enough skill put into it to suggest there might be something more artistically interesting going on as well. The results are certainly quite personal.

There are practical arguments for antiquing. It's kind of handy when you're playing in an ensemble: from a distance my cello looks basically the same as the others around me in the orchestra even though some of them are a century older and genuinely quite harshly used. And you never have the pain of getting the first obvious scratch or chip in a pristine instrument.

Curiously this doesn't seem to be a very new practice either - I think even 150 years ago, new instruments were being turned out designed to look like much older ones.

* Sounds and plays better, not just cost a bit more. I didn't choose it for the antiquing!