Bow & Bridge Violin and bow makers, as the old books printed them

Books › The varnishes of the Italian violin-makers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their influence on tone;, 1904 › scan 21

Scan 21

The varnishes of the Italian violin-makers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their influence on tone;, 1904

10 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.

1was soon formed among experts that the old varnishes were coloured, that is to say, that they all consisted of a similar or common basis tinted by the introduction of adventitious, substantive colouring matters, according to the taste of the different makers. This natural deduction from appearances has been reiterated with so much confidence, by persons having an extensive practical knowledge of the old instruments, that it has hitherto been generally accepted.
3To produce successful imitations, however, in accordance with this view of their constituents, was by no means easy, owing to the difficulties attending the admixture of colouring matters with oil-varnish: organic pigments being practically insoluble in oil of turpentine and in linseed-oil.
5These difficulties were in a great measure surmounted by means discovered by M. Eugène Mailand, an educated amateur, who published a book on the subject in Paris in 1859. There can be little doubt that this treatise is the foundation of all the most successful methods which have been used in modern times for the imitation of the old varnishes, although its influence has not, at all times, been acknowledged.
7It has been found that these imitations do not possess the peculiar optical properties of the original substance, neither have the instruments covered with them qualities of tone similar to those of the old ones. It is supposed that these acknowledged defects are to be attributed to the want of the beneficial effects of time and use on the wood of which the violins are made as well as on the varnish in which they are clothed.
9Although for a number of years, several excellent

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