Violin-Making by Edward Heron-Allen

Author:Edward Heron-Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2005-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

Nelle selve io vivea cipresso muto

Oi, morto, ho voce, poi che me fer liuto.

________________

1 Thes most interesting and valuable letters were (owing to the medium of their publication) not nearly so widely spread amongst the musical world as they ought to have been. In the year 1873, Mr. G. H. M. Muntz, of Birchfield, reprinted them in the form of an ornate little pamphlet, entitled, “A Lost Art Revived; Cremona Violins and Varnish, by Charles Reade;” it waa printed by J. Bellows. at the Steam Press, Eastgate, Gloucester; but only a small number were printed, and the circulation was necessarily limited

2 This “rubbing” test has been in great favour with many experimentalists. A fiddle by the “brothers Amati” is said to have given off a small of mastic and linseed oil; and instruments by Joseph Guarnerius (filius Andreæ), and by Joseph “del Cesù,” submitted to the same test, suggested to the seekere after the mystery the presence of benzoin, as well as of mastic and linseed oil !

3 It must be borne in mind that amber is much cheaper and Commoner in Italy and the Tyrol than in the northern Countries of Europe.

4 This was the late John Lott (vide Chapter III., p. 84).

5 The use of powdered glass has by many authors been held up to derision, and rightly too, if it is to be understood as an ingredient of the varnish; but though some’ short-sighted plagiarists may have copied into their works recipes including powdered glass as a part of the varnish, if you could find the originals from which they derived their information, you Would probably find that they included powdered glass with good intent, expecting from it merely a mechanical action in the preparation of the varnish, not a Chemical influence on the nature of the completed article. Thus M. Eugène Mailand (vide note p. 186) recommends the use of a stratum of coarsely powdered glass at the bottom of the phial in which the resins etc., are mixed, to prevent the resins from adhering to the bottom of the ressel, never dreaming that any one would take him to be recommending the glass as “adding trasparencg to the varnsh.”

6 Under this head would come a kind of copal, known variously as “Indian copal,” “dammar,” and “gum animi,” which flows from a Sumatran tree called Vateria Indica, which was, in former times, known as “white amber,” or “white resin,” or “white incense,” which names were also given to a mixture of oil and Grecian wax, sometimes used as a varnish.

7 As the names of many of these gums, etc., may be unfamiliar to my readers, I have placed an Appendix, descriptive of them, at the end of the book (Appendix A), and the reference letters in the text refer thereto.

8 D. Alexii Pedemontani de Secretis Libri Septem. (Basle, 1603.)

9 Sandarach, or rather what is sold as such, is a mixture of the resin described in note u, Appendix A, with dammar and hard Indian copal, the place of the African sandarach being sometimes taken by true gum juniper.

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