Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 154
Scan 154
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
8 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1VIOLIN VARNISH
3out the magical Cremonese transparency; the Cremona is amber-coloured (early) or (later) light red orange, and sometimes velvety brown, and very soft and glossy as it rubs away.
5The Venetian varnish of many shades is very clear; the Stainer, yellow-brown, with a subtle roseate flush at times; the normal German, brown and muddy; the French, Cremonese in colour, but glassy and chipping rather than soft and glossy. Some of the English varnish is remarkable, that of Dodd even approximating closely to the Cremona school, &c.
7On the whole, the best solution of the Cremona mystery seems to me that it was probably no mystery at all, which also best accounts for the disappearance of the varnish towards the middle of the eighteenth century. It is absurd to suppose that the varnish used by at least one hundred makers for more than one hundred years (for Italian violins from 1550 to 1660 up to 1740 all have it) could have been a secret; it was probably the ordinary varnish of commerce, superseded by the quicker and more convenient spirit-varnishes which came in and thrust it out of the market, and these ready-made compounds proved excellent for furniture which is not prized for its resonant or variously tinted qualities, but they unfortunately put out of court the kind of varnish best suited for violins—the yielding, soft, elastic oil varnish; and the very ingredients, e.g. dragon blood (of the liliaceae trees) ceased to be in demand, and consequently disappeared from the Italian markets.
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