Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 205
Scan 205
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
22 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3keep it shining wherever the varnish still shows up, and scrupulously clean elsewhere.
5The vile notion that a coat of rosin does good, and may be left with advantage like a festering mass on the belly underneath the strings, is a most grievous delusion!
7Why suffer the corrosion of the varnish with a foreign substance to remain there more than on any other part of the wood?
9Rosin is for the strings, not for the belly, and the strings are for friction, and are intended to be scraped through and worn out and replaced, but the belly is for vibration and is never intended to wear out.
11Your rosin is life to the strings, enabling them to speak, but 'tis death to the wood, stifling its pores and striking it dumb!
13Never touch your violin with oil, or spirit, or colouring. Only a skilled repairer can venture to do that, and even he will not always be wise.
15I have seen really good old instruments too much cleaned or daubed over ruthlessly with muddy brown varnish, much, as Ruskin says, he saw men with knives and mops of paint at Venice scraping away and splashing over with raw blue the vast old faded skies of Paul Veronese!
17A spick and span mania seizes at times upon restorers of all schools.
19A relative of mine had a Spagnoletti restored to him by a cleaner, but so repainted as to be worthless.
21Have not half the cathedrals in the land been dis-
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