Books › The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903 › scan 62
Scan 62
The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 48. See the scan on archive.org.
1reproduce the exact form if the half or more of the peg-box and adjacent portions are cut clean away as is often done.
3Scrolls of masterly design and execution are frequently met with mounted on a peg-box, selected or carved, without the least reference to the style of the original, imparting to the whole a hideously mixed and vulgar aspect. Save then, every morsel of the original work that you possibly can, especially if it be the work of old Italian makers, as it will be sure to have about it some points of interest, or that will call for your admiration of its artistic merits. Bear in mind that at the present day utility and low price are "to the front." Unfortunately for art, a very large section of the public called musical, ignore the artistic aspect of the violin, apart from its individual authorship and monetary equivalent, and think almost solely—not always in the right way—about its working or sounding capacity. To them one sort of curled heading to the peg-box is as good as another, if strong enough, the whole of this part of the mechanism being simply dedicated to the winding up of unwilling "catgut." The old masters, their pupils, and modern imitators, have thought otherwise and treated this portion of the structure as that in which they could concentrate much of their best artistic talent. To them it has been the crowning head piece of the work, and requiring for effect the closest attention in detail. Every part of it has received, by each master, a distinctive touch of tool, or conception of design, that the modern repairer should earnestly "read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest," so that if a small portion is by carelessness, or unavoidable accident, chipped off, the contour may not by restoration (?) be spoilt, or the flow of line ruinously disturbed. Some remarks might be made by some admirers of high finish in its simple sense, about the bold unfinished gouging of some of the old Italian makers, and queries whether the irregularities should be studiously followed up by the repairer, as it should unquestionably be with work of high refinement and minute finish. The answer is at once simple and conclusive, every part that can be
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