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 40
Scan 40
The arts and crafts book of the worshipful Guild of violin-makers of Markneukirchen, from the year 1677 to the year 1772, 1894
4 lines. Read by computer on 29 August 2026. Printed page 32. See the scan on archive.org.
1quality of the diploma work required. Just as to-day, violins of different qualities of higher or lower value are in demand [and we should consider it as an artistic impossibility for a Joachim, an Ole Bull, or a Princess Dolgorouki to try to produce the indescribable fruits of their artistic knowledge and power from the same sort of instrument as that used by gipsies, village-musicians, and ballad-singers] so in those days it was an undoubted necessity for the welfare of the "arts and crafts" that the Masters should be able to manufacture wares of different values. In this way they almost attained in one century to a distribution of work, expecting from one Master violins of inferior manufacture, and from another the fabrication of finer instruments, and the diploma works were judged accordingly.
3Still in March, 1766, they resolved to inquire of the Council how the articles relating to the diploma-work in the Landgrave's confirmation of the charter should be interpreted. The Council gave answer in the interest of the manufacture and the trade, that each candidate, for the rights of mastership, should be obliged to deliver two diploma works, one an inlaid and the other a plain violin; and thus the manufacture of an ordinary violin no longer sufficed for the attainment of mastership. According to modifications introduced later on [resulting from the continuance of the same ideas] it was permissible to make two inlaid violins, of finer quality, as Johann Gottfried Kretschmann did in the year 1767, or else one inlaid violoncello such as Johann Georg Reichel
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.