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Scan 353
British Violin Makers: A Biographical Dictionary of British Makers of Stringed Instruments and Bows and a Critical Description of Their Work, 1920
4 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 285. See the scan on archive.org.
1fourteen, or even earlier in many instances, with the scantiest knowledge of even the rudiments of science, and with barely the skill to draw straight lines and simple curves. Violin making, it should be borne in mind, is a science and an art combined. A science teaches us to know, and an art to do. It is a science in so far as it investigates the necessary principles and forms of construction, and thus teaches us to understand how the principles are discovered and the knowledge of them applied: it is an art when it is occupied in framing a number of practical rules, and in giving to material certain definite forms. It is a delusion to think that violin making is only a kind of glorified carpentry or cabinet making. Many violin makers regard it as such, with the result that they never (except perhaps by accident) produce a great violin—a violin which is at once a work of art and a great musical instrument. When a violin maker tells me that his chief ambition is to make a fiddle that is beautiful to look at, I cannot help thinking that his knowledge of the craft is somewhere in the neighbourhood of zero. Another tells me that he simply works for tone, and cares nothing for appearance, and I hear something whisper to me: "He has not the skill to make a thing of beauty, but he would if he could." The conclusion of the whole matter, and my apology for this digression, is this: let him who aspires to be the Stradivari or the Guarneri of the future train his brain to think, his eye to see, and his hands to do.
3Mr. Richardson went through a long course of rigorous training, and the result is manifest both in the fine tone and in the graceful lines of his instruments. As to tone, the result of the Cobbett competition, in which Mr. Richardson's violin won the first prize, is sufficient guarantee of excellence. And the workmanship is equal to the tone. One notable feature of the construction is the careful graduation of the thicknesses of the plates. Another is the discrimination shown as to the proper quantity of wood that should be left in the plates. Mr. Richardson works his plates neither too thin nor too thick. To work them too thin is, of course,
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