Books › British Violin Makers, 1920 › scan 102
Scan 102
British Violin Makers, 1920
2 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 82. See the scan on archive.org.
1of the reasons why there are so many spoilt old instruments. The best makers are not necessarily, nor even usually, the best repairers. As a matter of fact very few of the leading British violin makers are renowned for their repairs, and the majority of them do not undertake such work at all. I do not think, however, a man can be a good repairer unless he is able to make an instrument, and is thoroughly conversant with the theory of its construction. Repairing is to making what surgery is to anatomy—skill in the one is dependent on a knowledge of the other. There are some scores of repairers of a sort up and down the country, but they are not repairers in the true sense of the word; they are dabblers. An artistic repairer does not merely mend the fiddle, he restores it—restores it, that is, as near as possible to its original condition, and by the help and with the addition of as little new material as possible. He does not, like the vandal Ortega of whom we read, substitute a brand new table for a cracked old one, nor even, indeed, the tiniest splinter, where he can possibly avoid it. All the old pieces that have broken off, if they are not lost, he deftly and cunningly refits in their proper position. It has been said of the repairs of François Gand, of Paris, that they were "masterpieces of ingenuity and delicate workmanship." "The care that he took and the judgment which he exercised in bringing together the various broken parts of an imperfect instrument, that the original appearance might be maintained as closely as possible, cannot be too highly praised. He often accomplished seeming
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