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 311
Scan 311
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
15 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN AND BOW MAKERS
3WILLIAMS, ALFRED, Cheltenham, contemporary. He was born at Redditch, June 28, 1840, and he works at 8 Great Western Road, Cheltenham. He has made a good number of instruments, which are of rather above average merit as regards workmanship, and very good as regards tone. He works on the two leading models, and inserts a differently worded label into each copy. Facsimile of one of the labels :— one of two readings
4WILLIAMS, ALFRED, Cheltenham, contemporary. He was born at Redditch, June 28, 1840, and he works at 8 Great Western Road, Cheltenham. He has made a good number of instruments, which are of rather above average merit as regards workmanship, and very good as regards tone. He works on the two leading models, and inserts a differently worded label into each copy. Facsimile of one of the labels:— one of two readings
6Joseph Guarnerius
7fecit
8Cremone Hinc 1782.
9I.H.S.
10Alfred Williams.
12WILLIAMS, BENJAMIN, Aberavon: 1768–1839. It is very remarkable that Wales, the land of song ("Môr o gân yw Cymru gyd"), has produced so few violin-makers. This is probably due to the fact that she has cultivated vocal at the entire expense of instrumental music. The orchestra is all but non est in Wales. But then, the Welsh people have ceased to be an artistic people. Even their bards to-day know no other art than that of cynganedd, and it is even doubtful if a quasi-esoteric use of numbers be a sufficiently important art to command the homage of the best talent. And where the orchestra is an unknown quantity, the art of fiddle-making may be denoted by zero.
14The only Welsh fiddle-maker (barring a few who made sporadic and amateurish efforts) was Benjamin Williams of Aberavon, a joiner by trade. This maker was born in 1768, and died in 1839. He was buried in Michaelston-super-avan Churchyard, but there is no tombstone to mark his resting-place. His grandson, John Davies, now living at Ystrad, Rhondda Valley, who is seventy-five years of age, and who can remember his grandfather very well, says that Benjamin Williams was a tall, wiry, broad-browed man, with a patriarchal crop of snow-white hair and beard. He
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