Scan 69
The Fiddle Fancier's Guide: A Manual of Information Regarding Violins …, 1892
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1sion, and although B. S. Fendt got a prize medal, the one which he should have had—the grand council medal—went to J. B. Vuillaume, of Paris. The jury on the violins in the 1851 Exhibition consisted of Sir H. R. Bishop, Sigismund Thalberg, W. Sterndale Bennett, Hector Berlioz, J. R. Black, Chevalier Neukomm, Cipriani Potter, Dr. Schafthauk, Sir George Smart and Professor Henry Wylde. They were assisted by the Rev. W. Cazalet, James Stewart and William Telford. Only one of these gentlemen could even play the violin when he was a young man, namely, Sir George Smart. The others were general musicians, pianists and organists—distinguished, of course, in high degree, but who knew little more about the question of fiddles than the man in the moon. One was a pianoforte maker, another, an organ builder, a third a geologist and metallurgist, a fourth a physician, a fifth a clergyman who happened to be superintendent of the Royal Academy, and the rest were professors there, or elsewhere, of the piano and organ. The very same gentlemen, in fact, who awarded prize medals to successful competitors in barrel organs or big drums distributed the honours for the most wonderful instrument in the world, and it is not, therefore, surprising that the object rewarded in this case was, in the words of Sir Henry Bishop, "New modes of making violins in such a manner that they are matured and perfected immediately on the completion of the manufacture, thus avoiding the necessity of keeping them for considerable periods to develop their excellencies." That is the deliberate statement of the chairman of the jury as to the reason why they gave the
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