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 50
Scan 50
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 42. See the scan on archive.org.
1Georg Paulus did not begin his commercial tours in his old age; he had probably dealt in the basses made by his friends and relations, the Reichels, for decades. We may take as an example of the difficulties with which the fabrication of, and traffic in, basses were beset, that a member of an old established family of citizen manufacturers, Carl Friedrich Jacob (born in 1778), was designated as a bass-maker on his death in 1814, whereas he had previously been by turns carpenter, locksmith, violin and general instrument maker.
3The manual dexterity of the hill-folk is properly looked upon as an important factor in the history of modern industries, and in the Vogtlandish hill country this aptitude seems to have attained a particularly wide development. It would otherwise be difficult to understand how in an age like the 17th and 18th centuries, in which the different manufactures were monopolised by so many different Guilds or Trades Unions, the same person could be by turns (to judge by the extant accounts of isolated individuals), shoemaker, tailor, furrier, cloth-maker, saw-smith, and then string-maker. But even though different branches of the musical instrument making industry were frequently practised by the same person, yet it may be inferred, in view of the progress in the technics of instrument-making, that it was less in consequence of a many sided aptitude for art work, than in consequence of a mere endeavour to find occupation (amid the many channels of activity open to craftsmen employed in lucrative and artistic trades), that craftsmen eked.
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