Scan 31
A Review Of Ancient And Modern Violin Making, 1899
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1pose they did, as they could not have had any considerable stock on hand at one time. As a proof of this, they were frequently found away in the mountains in search of wood, where they "superintended the felling of the trees, and selecting the parts that pleased them." This shows the age of the wood to be well within the lifetime of any of them. Some of their wood might have attained the age of ten or twelve years, possibly twenty, but I have no doubt that much was used within a year, as Italy has a climate in which wood will season in a surprisingly short time. One writer describes the room in which Stradivarius seasoned his wood. He says: "It was so built as to command the full action of the sun, and became heated like a furnace." This may have been the truth, but it was not very complimentary to the judgment of the old maker, for it is a well established fact that the nearer you approach kiln-drying the more the wood is injured.
3The claim that the old makers gave the wood some chemical or other treatment to impart an artificial age is the merest supposition without a shadow of evidence; in fact it is
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.