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Scan 303
An Encyclopedia of the Violin, 1925
22 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 275. See the scan on archive.org.
1In France and Belgium, collections of violins were formed and included many of the finest specimens by the master Italian makers of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
3Several of the best known collectors restricted themselves entirely to the instruments of Stradivarius and Guarnerius. Among these, the most important were the Duc de Campo-Selice, who at his death in 1887, owned eight of the finest examples of Stradivarius.
5Others were the Count de Chimay, Vicomte de Janze and M. de St. Senoch, all of whom possessed a quartet of instruments made by Stradivarius.
7M. Wilmot of Antwerp owned many fine instruments, and M. L'Evêque of La Rochelle formed a large and important collection.
9In England, violin collecting was more general than in either France or Italy. Amateur quartets have been popular there for many years, and due to this fact, many sets of the finest Italian instruments were formed, in addition to several very important large collections.
11Of the latter, that of Gillot, the pen manufacturer, was the largest, containing many splendid violins which were the work of Stradivarius.
13The Goding collection contained a number of good violins, several of which are now in the United States. Other important collections were made by Plowden, Fontaine, Bennett and Waddell. The latter collection was purchased in Glasgow in August, 1923, by an American music house and brought to New York. It contained the famous "Betts" Strad of 1704 and the LeDuc Jos. Guarnerius del Gesu of 1743, besides a number of other very choice violins of different makes.
15Other collections of note were made by Mr. Frederick Smith of Manchester, Mr. Croall and Mr. Crawford of Edinburgh and David Laurie of Glasgow. Three magnificent quartets of Stradivarii are now or were owned in England by Mr. Charles Oldham, Baron Knoop and Mr. R. E. Brandt.
17The novelist, Charles Reade, was a keen violin lover, and owned many violins during his life. The names of Englishmen who possessed Stradivarii in the last two or three decades would form a long list.
19Germany, after 1871, began to acquire some of the world's finest violins and cellos. Prior to that time, there were numerous Stradivarii and Guarnerii in the possession of her famous violinists, but it was after the Franco-Prussian war and during the ensuing prosperity, ending with the outbreak of war in 1914, that German amateurs entered the lists in Paris and London, and began carrying off to Germany some of the very choicest examples.
21Joseph Joachim had a number of Strads during his career. At his death he possessed three fine ones of the year 1715. David, Spohr, Wilhelmj, Bott, Ernst and other famous German artists possessed numerous fine instruments. Baron Mendelssohn and his brother own a fine quartet of Stradivarii. It will now be in order to consider violin collecting in the United States, and to
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