Scan 172
Joseph Guarnerius, his work and his master [Andreas Gisalberti], 1906
10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 104. See the scan on archive.org.
1subject, there is some amount of difficulty in making the necessary careful comparisons.
3All of the before mentioned items, taken erroneously or not into calculation by critics of the early part of last century, must have appeared to them as containing much more force than they would at the present day, inasmuch as there was then a power of selection not at all possible now; consequently those that pleased the eye most in respect of the texture, figure or delicacy of fibre in the materials used, were preferably purchased.
5Later on, when more and more of the work of each master became sought after, selection became increasingly difficult, as each specimen rose in value; condition or state of preservation became in the main the standard of value, and those which had been refused before were now snatched at with avidity.
7When under the ordeal of trial by various performers, the essential qualities of tone, beauty of form and splendour of varnish were found to be on an equality with those which had arrived in times gone by, the differences, aspect of the grain, or, as was supposed by some, defects in the choice of wood, were overlooked, and the critics had to settle down to the conclusion that the makers had some good or sound reason for using material destined to be condemned by a few people in an after age, and who, literally speaking, knew nothing of the subject they were talking so loudly over. At the time it would not have been at all out of the way to hear one writer decrying Joseph's use of timber with the "cloud" as being what modern builders call "sappy" through carelessness, like, as they supposed, the other peculiarities were that he indulged in.
9The same objection would, as a matter of course, not hold good where Joseph used a portion of wood that had been worm-eaten, as there is ample evidence to hand that he considered the material far too valuable to throw aside, and filled the perforated parts here and there with fresh wood, very neatly inserted even to the eyes of a modern repairer.
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