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Scan 180
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 166. See the scan on archive.org.
1was the best. He was a clever merchant withal, and was not without his detractors, but I imagine that the bulk of the trade jealousies which his unexampled success evoked have long since been extinguished. Some years before his death he invented a machine for regulating the density of the gut in the manufacture of violin strings, and went to Naples to organise its application in the establishment of Rufini. He was a many-sided artist, and has left numerous interesting specimens of work outside the ordinary course of violin making, and among these may be mentioned a marvellous copy of a three-stringed rebec, which he imitated from a figure in a small Italian miniature of the thirteenth century, and presented to the Paris Conservatoire. He was also the inventor of the Octobass, a three stringed instrument, tuned to C, G, C, thus giving four notes lower that the ordinary double bass. The Contralto was another of his inventions. It was a kind of tenor, and was reported to have double the orchestral effect of the usual model. The Chin-mute was invented by him. It saves the performer from interrupting himself in order to place the mute on the bridge. It is worked by the chin pressing at pleasure on the tail-piece, and was called by Vuillaume the Pédale Sourdine. He made a great deal of money, no doubt, out of the violins which he secured in Milan at the death of Luigi Tarisio, and died a comparatively wealthy man. Besides his studies in violin making, he directed his attention to the manufacture of bows, and, with the model of Tourte before him, he was instrumental in training some of the best bow makers that France can claim since Tourte's
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