Books › The varnishes of the Italian violin-makers of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and their influence on tone;, 1904 › scan 43
Scan 43
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.
1(car on recherche en lutherie les bois les plus secs; ceux en un mot qui ont perdu leurs resines).
3It is needless to say that wood is apt to become more, rather than less, resinous in drying; the resins which are in the fresh wood are perfectly stable and always remain; parts of the volatile essential oils are likely to become resinous by oxidation during the slow, drying process.
5M. Mailand's statement as to what happens to a varnish when spread on dry wood is pure imagination; it is not so easy to dissociate the resins from the heavier parts of the essence as he supposes.
7M. Mailand is fully aware that his view—that it is necessary to prevent the wood of violins from absorbing varnish—is directly opposed to that of M. Savart.
9There is one singular circumstance connected with the experiments of M. Mailand to which attention must be directed. It will be remembered that he rubbed an old Italian violin with spirits of wine in order to ascertain if the varnish were soluble in this menstruum or not. He does not say how he made this test, but it may be assumed that he moistened a piece of cotton or linen cloth with alcohol and applied it to the varnish. The varnish was soluble in alcohol; consequently a small quantity of dissolved varnish was transferred to the surface of the cloth. If M. Mailand had observed the colour of this varnish on the cloth, he would have seen that it was not the same as the apparent colour of the thick pellicle, but exactly matched that of the thin film where the varnish was worn away, which he had observed to be yellow. It is evident that if he had made this simple observation all his theories would have been scattered to the winds.
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.