Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 224
Scan 224
Old violins, 1905
20 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 202. See the scan on archive.org.
1keep it shining wherever the varnish still shows up, and scrupulously clean elsewhere.
3The vile notion that a coat of rosin does good, and may be left with advantage like a festering mass on the belly underneath the strings, is a most grievous delusion!
5Why suffer the corrosion of the varnish with a foreign substance to remain there more than on any other part of the wood?
7Rosin is for the strings, not for the belly, and the strings are for friction, and are intended to be scraped through and worn out and replaced, but the belly is for vibration and is never intended to wear out.
9Your rosin is life to the strings, enabling them to speak, but 'tis death to the wood, stifling its pores and striking it dumb!
11Never touch your violin with oil, or spirit, or colouring. Only a skilled repairer can venture to do that, and even he will not always be wise.
13I have seen really good old instruments too much cleaned or daubed over ruthlessly with muddy brown varnish, much, as Ruskin says, he saw men with knives and mops of paint at Venice scraping away and splashing over with raw blue the vast old faded skies of Paul Veronese!
15A spick and span mania seizes at times upon restorers of all schools.
17A relative of mine had a Spagnoletti restored to him by a cleaner, but so repainted as to be worthless.
19Have not half the cathedrals in the land been dis-
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