Books › Old violins and violin lore. Famous makers of Cremona and Brescia, and of England, France, and Germany (with biographical dictionary); famous players; and chapters on varnish, strings and bows, 1893 › scan 26
Scan 26
Old violins and violin lore. Famous makers of Cremona and Brescia, and of England, France, and Germany (with biographical dictionary); famous players; and chapters on varnish, strings and bows, 1893
4 lines. Read by computer on 14 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1PLATE I (to face page 19)
3A Duiffoprugcar viol da Gamba, owned by Mr George Donaldson. This matchless antique is doubtless one of many, but most of the rest have perished; it stands almost alone as a poetic specimen of the phantasy of the old viol makers. It is elaborately decorated on the back, after the taste of the period, with an excess of ornament, which the fine instinct of the subsequent makers of violins rejected as prejudicial to tone. The habit of adopting a creature's head, or a face, for a scroll long lingered, and is not unknown in the work of Stradivarius. In England numerous copies of Duke that have been palmed off as original have lion heads. These instruments were usually "made in Germany," and it appears to have been a favourite practice there to use such carved scrolls.
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