Books › Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883 › scan 177
Scan 177
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 163. See the scan on archive.org.
1also shows that he never, in all probability, even saw a Stradivari violin. This instrument was the property of J. B. Vuillaume, and is described as of quite an ordinary make, with the purfling painted instead of being inlaid, and having a small design in black running round the upper and lower tables. It has a carved head, and its arching is well calculated, resembling, in this respect, the instruments of Maggini, but the sound holes are badly designed and badly cut, the whole being without any value except as a curiosity. It has a light yellow varnish. In the inside there is a ticket in the maker's handwriting, bearing the following inscription: "Fait par moy, Jean Vuillaume, à Mirecourt, 1738." The same authority, Vidal, from whom these particulars are taken, says that it is impossible for any connoisseur to find in this work the slightest trace of the magnificent skill of Stradivari. Some researches were made in order to ascertain something about him, and if he was an ancestor of the subject of these lines, but they proved fruitless. Claude Vuillaume, born in Mirecourt in 1772, is the first known member of the more renowned family, although he was only a maker of cheap fiddles and branded them with his name without any further addition in the way of date, &c. He had five children, four of whom adopted the profession of their father—the other was a daughter. The work of these four which left their father's shop was branded in large letters with the fanciful mark, "Au roi David, Paris"—a mark which was also, to speak mildly, inaccurate as well as fanciful. The eldest of these apprentices was Jean Baptiste, who was born in Mirecourt on the 7th of October, 1798. When he was nineteen years old,
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