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Scan 157
Old violins, 1905
6 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 139. See the scan on archive.org.
1for the poor tenor, the Cinderella of the establishment, which is regrettable when one thinks of the glorious violas of Maggini and the Amati. Mr Hill's Barak Norman is now the property of Mr Doyle.
3William Ebsworth Hill, our great repairer, connoisseur, and dealer all in one, was born in 1817. He was educated at the Borough Road School, under the well-known Dr Lancaster, but it is certain that he went early to the bench, for at the age of fourteen we find him employed in cutting bridges in his father's workshop.
5For this purpose he used only a bradawl and a knife, and towards the end of his life he returned to bridge-cutting, and has left many beautiful specimens. His sons have a collection of two hundred, and no two of the same pattern; they have also reverently preserved under glass his simple tools. He worked with extraordinary rapidity, equalled by his fastidious finish. He preferred the commonest tools, so only they were of the finest metal. He used to scorn the mechanical labour-saving appliances which now enable workmen to turn out hundreds instead of dozens of fiddles, and he heartily despised artificers who needed an elaborate plant before they could produce anything decent. A good maker, he was wont to say, could make a fiddle "with a knife and fork." Mr Hill's skill in bridge-making on one occasion misled so eminent a judge as Monsieur Fétis, of the Brussels Conservatoire. In 1851, the Prince Consort having expressed a wish to hear a concert of old instruments, a viol d'amore which was to be played by Ebsworth's brother, Henry
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