Scan 70
The Violin Gallery: Comprising: Section I. South Kensington Special …, 1890
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1vulgar varnish of the day will chip or wear. We cannot do what Stradiuarius could not do—give to a new violin the peculiar beauty, that comes to the heterogeneous varnishes of Cremona from age and honest wear; but, on the other hand, it is a mistake to suppose that one hundred years are required to develop the beauty of any Cremona varnishes, old or new. The ordinary wear of a century cannot be condensed into one year or five, but it can be condensed into twenty years. Any young amateur may live to play on a magnificent Cremona made for himself, if he has the enthusiasm to follow my directions. Choose the richest and finest wood, have the violin made after the pattern of a rough Joseph Guarnerius; then you need not sand-paper the back, sides, or head, for sand-paper is a great enemy to varnish; it drives more wood-dust into the pores than you can blow out. If you sand-paper the belly, sponge that finer dust out, as far as possible, and varnish when dry. That will do no harm, and throw up the fibre. Make your own linseed oil—the linseed oil of commerce is adulterated with animal oil and fish oil, which are non-drying oils—and varnish as I have indicated above, and when the violin is strung treat it regularly with a view to fast wear; let it hang up in a warm place, expose to dry air, night and day. Never let it be shut up in a case except for transport. Lend it for months to the leader of an orchestra. Look after it, and see that it is constantly played and constantly exposed to dry air all about it. Never clean it, never touch it with a silk handkerchief. In twenty years your heterogeneous varnishes will have parted company in many places. The back will be worn quite picturesque; the belly will look as old as Joseph Guarnerius; there will be a delicate film on the face of the grand red varnish mellowed by exposure, and a marvellous fire below. In a word, you will have a glorious Cremona fiddle. Do you aspire to do more, and to make a downright old Cremona violin? Then, my young swell, you must treat yourself as well as the violin; you must not smoke all day, nor the last thing at night; you must never take a dram before dinner and call it bitters, you must be as true to your spouse as ever you can, and, in a word, live moderately, and cultivate good temper and avoid great wrath. By these means Deo volente, you shall live to see the violin that was made for you and varnished by my receipt, as old and worn and beautiful a Cremona as the Joseph Guarnerius No. 94, beyond which nothing can go.
3To show the fiddle-maker what may be gained by using as little sand-paper as possible, let him buy a little of Maunder's palest copal varnish; then let him put a piece of deal on his bench and take a few shavings off it with a carpenter's plane. Let him lay his varnish directly on the wood so planed. It will have a fire and a beauty he will never quite attain to by scraping, sand-papering, and then varnishing the same wood with the same varnish. And this applies to harewood as well as deal. The back of the Vuillaume Stradiuarius, which is the finest part, has clearly not been sand-papered in places, so probably not at all. Wherever it is possible, varnish after cold steel, at all events in imitating the Cremonese, and especially Joseph Guarnerius. These, however, are minor details, which I have only inserted, because I forsee that I may be unable to
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