Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 117
Scan 117
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
14 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3copies, chiefly of Stradiuarius, which even now deceive the innocent, and for a moment may even puzzle a connoisseur. Well, it was no doubt shoddy, but shoddy of the best sort; shoddy raised to a fine art, like those roses so subtly made out of silk or cambric that we might easily pop them into water to prevent them from fading.
5This new-found copying industry was a delight as well as a profit to the clever French craftsman.
7He loved a Cremona; he copied it as men copy the old masters again and again, till they know every touch of the immortal workman, and revel in its reproduction.
9"I have completed," remarked Vuillaume in his declining years, "three thousand instruments, all sold, all paid for, and the money spent, and it affords me great satisfaction."
11Like Ebsworth Hill, Jean Baptiste loved to do it all himself. Every instrument was varnished carefully by his own hands, and many are made throughout by him.
13But what is the actual merit of Vuillaume's violins? Fine work, yes; admirable counterfeits, yes; but the great expectations raised by the appearances are unfortunately not always answered by the tone. His best are good, and will run into forty pounds, perhaps more; but his worst are dear at five pounds. Nor can Vuillaume pretend to rival in power his great French predecessors, Pique or Lupôt, who copied, but without registering the defects of age, accident, and decay, which are so cleverly reproduced in Vuillaume's typical specimens.
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