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Scan 191
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
2 lines. Read by computer on 30 September 2026. Printed page 177. See the scan on archive.org.
1about 1706. In Norway the peasantry are clever enough to fabricate their own fiddles, so that there has been little or no room for the development of the manufacture as a regular industry in the land of fiords and amts. In the Exhibition of 1862, a specimen of their class of work—a Hardanger violin—was exhibited by a Mr. A. Heldal, of Bergen. Two names from Russia have been deemed of sufficient importance to be enshrined in history, viz., S. Kiaposse of St. Petersburgh, about 1748, and A. Grobitz of Warsaw, about 1750. Athens and Constantinople have also had, I think, each a maker assigned to them, and I am told that the United States have, of late years, been making gigantic strides in the art, but I am not in a position to give any information regarding the quality of the violins made there. Our American cousins are, however, now said to be equalling, if not excelling, the greatest Cremonese instruments that were ever made, and if this news prove as true as it is good, it will, provided the fiddles are cheap, be very welcome to the Old World amateur of modest means who has hitherto sighed in vain for a great instrument. I believe Canada claims some makers of repute, but of these I know nothing.
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