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Scan 181
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 167. See the scan on archive.org.
1death. Vuillaume also invented the steel bow, and for ten years he turned out from his workshops about five hundred of these annually. He is the ingenious author of the fixed nut. He it was also who supplied Fetis with the documents and information, and the projection of the progressive diminution of the diameter of Tourte's sticks, which forms the illustration contained in the chapter on bows which Fetis appended to his work on Stradivari; and it was to Vuillaume that Felix Savart was indebted for the largest part of the knowledge which enabled him to carry out the remarkable series of experiments to which I have already referred. He was a member of the committee of the South Kensington Musical Exhibition, held in 1872, and was invited to superintend the arrangement of the Italian stringed instruments exhibited there, where his own three exhibits in violins, already described, were the finest shown. He also lent to this exhibition an exquisite cetera, made by Stradivari in 1700, having carvings from designs by Correggio. This instrument was found in Venice and brought to France in 1845, and is a work of the most extraordinary finish. It was the property of the exhibitor. At the London Exhibition of 1862 he showed two imitations of a Stradivari violin, which some of the most experienced judges could not distinguish from the original. He made, occasionally, for personal acquaintances, some special instruments, which he jewelled in the upper table with rubies, a decoration which does not, of course, enhance the value of the violin except as a curio. I have seen one of these examples and do not think the device worthy of imitation.
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