Books › The arts and crafts book of the worshipful Guild of violin-makers of Markneukirchen, from the year 1677 to the year 1772, 1894 › scan 21
Scan 21
The arts and crafts book of the worshipful Guild of violin-makers of Markneukirchen, from the year 1677 to the year 1772, 1894
6 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 13. See the scan on archive.org.
1patron of the Jesuits), whose reign began in the year 1576, and Bohemia only succeeded in the year 1669 in obtaining the Royal edict granting freedom to the practice of Evangelical religious belief, which freedom, as history shows us, did not last long.
3A second no less weighty reason for our belief in an earlier commencement of the pursuit of violin-making in, and the unseverable affiliation of, the violin-maker families to our city, lies in the conditions necessarily precedent to the pursuit of the craft, and in the habits of life of that period itself. The possession of a house, and at the same time the acquisition of rights of citizenship laid at that time upon the owners of such privileges the necessarily primary and frugal groundwork of a thriving industry. The violin-making handicraft was distinguished from simple handiwork (whose practitioners delivered their wares on the spot for immediate use, and, as a rule had not far to go for materials) not only by the difficulty of disposing of its manufactures, but also by the great care and far-seeing calculations which come into requisition in the procuring of seasoned woods, of strings, and other materials necessary to the completion of the instruments.
5Such an art could only yield a certain (or indeed any) profit to those who had connections with districts and countries where the same art was already flourishing, and who knew the markets for the obtaining of its materials, and the sale of its products. The requirements of family life demanded, even of the skilled, that other means of livelihood such as beer-brewing, cattle-breeding, build-
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