Books › British violin-makers classical and modern; being a biographical and critical dictionary of British makers of the violin from the foundation of the classical school to the end of the nineteenth century, 1904 › scan 268
Scan 268
British violin-makers classical and modern; being a biographical and critical dictionary of British makers of the violin from the foundation of the classical school to the end of the nineteenth century, 1904
8 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1trade, and attended evening classes for mathematics and drawing. In 1869 he returned to Netherdale owing to failing health. It was soon after this that he essayed to make his first violin—a project carried out for the purpose of experiment, under the impetus of a theory then recently broached of a certain relation between proportionate form and musical sounds.
3In 1873 he regained health and came to London, hoping to find employment as a violin-maker. He found to his dismay that violin-making as a trade was non est in the metropolis, but to soothe his feelings he attended lectures on acoustics at the South Kensington Museum, and did considerable experimenting on the tonal qualities of different woods.
5In 1883 he got an appointment in the British Museum (Natural History), which relieved him of the drudgery of the bench. In 1884 he was married, and his wife sympathising with him in his weakness for fiddle-making, the passion for caliper and gouge broke out afresh. From 1884 to 1890 he studied the construction of the fiddle, and made moulds, models, templets, &c. Since 1890 all his spare moments have been given to his hobby, and up to the present he has made fifty-one violins and four violas. He is a slow, patient, and extremely careful worker, turning out only two or three instruments in the year. He is an artist in the highest sense of the word, and spends days over that which most makers spend only hours or minutes. His outline and model are original and highly artistic. The curves are pronounced, yet nervously delicate. His wood is magnificent. For several of his front tables he has used fine grained pine, without joint, cut from a gigantic tree grown in California. This was a tree of the species known as Sequoia Gigantea. It was 276 feet in height, and the annual rings proved it to be 1335 years old when cut down in 1872. It is very unconventional to use this wood, but the results show that conventionalism is sometimes on the erring path.
7The outline is grand and elegant. A very noticeable feature is the balance between the upper and lower portions
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