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 57

Scan 57

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

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

1Having disposed of the question of climatic influences, we have, secondly, to consider the other point which M. Savart raises by his suggestion that in an unvarnished sounding-board the vibrations destroy, little by little, the texture of the wood. It must be admitted that this proposition is presented in a somewhat loose form, even if we substitute his own word "contexture" for texture. It is not quite clear what he means, or whether he had formed any definite mental conception.
3In order to obtain such an exact mental conception of the possible effect of vibrations on the structure of wood, a somewhat long digression will be unavoidable.
5The cells of which trees and plants are constructed may be described (for the present purpose) as vesicles having thin membranous walls, formed of cellulose, but in nearly all cases more or less thickened by other substances. These membranes are permeable by fluids. The forms of these cells are of infinite variety; they appear generally to be derived from spheres, spheroids, or tapered cylinders, the derived angular or irregular forms being probably dependent on the conditions to which the cells are subjected, according to their positions in various structures.
7Everyone knows that a vessel or vesicle formed of a thin membrane has vastly different properties whether it is filled with a very light and elastic fluid, such as air (uncompressed), or with a comparatively dense and inelastic one, such as water; the substitution of the latter fluid for the former has a great stiffening effect on the vessel—it becomes much more rigid. In the case of the thin-walled cells of parenchyma, this

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