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Scan 209
Old violins, 1905
8 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 187. See the scan on archive.org.
1Tywersus, their private lute-maker, was deeply influenced by the work and models of the early Amatis, and from the school of Tywersus came Nicolas Renauld, Jean Medard, and Nicolas Medard. When Amati left Paris, whither he had gone to present his violins in person to Charles IX., he left behind him Nicolas Renauld, who slipped into the lucrative post of luthier to his French Majesty, and we find his friend and co-worker Medard installed in the same fat office under the Grand Monarque, Louis XIV., who, with his expensive mistresses, certainly spared no money or patronage to secure those who could in any way minister to the extravagant court pomp and artistic amusements of the Pompadour and the Petit Trianon.
3Meanwhile Mirecourt, in the heart of the Vosges mountains, with easy access to the grand timbers of their ancient forests, within beck and call of Lombardy, and in close touch with the great Italian fiddlemakers, Mirecourt long held supremacy as one of, if not the most important mart of fiddle manufacture.
5It shared with Mittenwald and Markneukirchen the honour of supplying that rapidly growing violin market which was now springing up, and whilst Cremona made largely for home consumption and a few foreign courts, Mirecourt undertook the more modest but equally useful duty of multiplying Cremona school violins, which circulated far and wide throughout the French provinces, and frequently reached our own shores; indeed the fiddles often passed for Cremonas.
7The popularity of these Cremona replicas brought
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