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Scan 284
Old Violins And Their Makers, 1883
4 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 270. See the scan on archive.org.
1that is, those which have lost their resins—are invariably selected, and to cause them to absorb in any degree a portion of that which it is desirable they should be free from, would be an entirely retrograde step. But, in applying an oil varnish, that is what would really happen, unless the instrument had been previously sized, for the first two or three coats would sink into the wood and remain completely dull, until it could absorb no more, when the instrument would be sized by the varnish itself. The violin would then be saturated with the essential oil, a portion of the resins and colouring matter, and the rest would remain on the surface. These resins, thus deprived of their oil, finding themselves, as it were, abandoned, would dry quickly, while losing a considerable portion of the elasticity which ought to have been communicated to them. More coats would be necessary in order to obtain the required brilliancy and solidity, and, no hard resins being employed, the varnish would become very friable from having lost, in part, the excipient which ought to protect them, and when, in the course of time, these upper coats became oxidised or rubbed off, the under ones would fall away in powder. Besides the injury to the sonority of the wood caused by the absorption of the essential oil, which would be sucked in as by a sponge, this process would entail an entirely useless thickness in the varnish, and the tone of the instrument would materially suffer in consequence.
3It, therefore, became necessary to consider whether the Cremonese makers had not employed some kind of sizing process prior to the application of the varnish, for their coats are so transparent and so thin as not to
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