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Scan 283
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 269. See the scan on archive.org.
1tested in the manner cited above, and with the results stated. That the great Cremonese instruments were not covered with what is termed an "oil varnish"—another phrase as misleading as that of "amber varnish"—may be easily decided by rubbing them with spirits of wine, which will be found irresistible; while, if the same process is repeated upon any article varnished with amber or hard copal, it will scarcely touch them. Anyone, indeed, who has tried to clean a genuine old Italian instrument by the simplest means, knows how difficult it is to avoid taking off some of its varnish.
3It is absolutely necessary that the wood of which a violin is made be thoroughly dry, and this process must be accomplished naturally. It will occupy, sometimes, a period of five or six years. If the wood be not dry, the application of the varnish, by preventing the evaporation of the remaining moisture, would simply hasten that decay which Liebig has described as being a slow combustion, caused by the putrescence of the vegetable albumen. Many experiments have, from time to time, been tried for the purpose of accelerating this desiccation by saturating the wood with compounds, but these have only resulted in failure. All foreign substances artificially introduced into wood have, up till now—with the one exception already named, the mother liquor of salt works—simply increased its density, and rendered it more easily broken. The preference which Savart expressed for oil varnish, because in penetrating the wood it gave it more consistence, was an opinion founded, apparently, upon another error, for in violin making the driest woods—
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