Books › The violin : how to choose one, 1893 › scan 25
Scan 25
The violin : how to choose one, 1893
2 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. Printed page 21. See the scan on archive.org.
1soft and sticky that it is scarcely dry enough for comfortable handling of his violins a year after the violin is covered with it, and I used to fancy that this very soft varnish (though a trial to the patience) by allowing of great expansion or contraction would be as helpful of the tone as an amber varnish, though not nearly so transparent and beautiful to look upon, but a curious accident led me to alter this opinion. I was asked to select a violin for a reader of my books, and wrote for one of this maker's, the back of which, through leaning on something, had got spoiled in the varnish, and looked so bad that there was nothing for it but to have it revarnished. To send it back to the maker for that purpose would have occupied a year and risked the same spoiling in transit when done, so after carefully testing the tone I handed the violin to a local maker, who washed off the varnish with a little turpentine, and then covered it with Whitelaw's amber varnish, a very beautiful and elastic mixture, discovered by a Glasgow chemist. The varnishing and drying occupied two months, but the result amply repaid the delay. The tone was decidedly improved—that is, whereas before it had been soft and characterless, it was now glassy, clear, and firm. As every little tells, therefore, and a thing of beauty is a joy for ever, I should say to the buyer of a modern violin, which has any pretensions to merit, see that it be covered with a fine amber oil varnish, the beauty and transparence of which arise from the fact that it can be coloured to various hues solely by the method by which it is melted, and without the admixture of colouring ingredients, such as dragon's blood, logwood essence, &c., which always give a streaky and paint-like appearance. Charles Reade, in his letters on the Kensington Exhibition of Violins, declared that amber could not be made into varnish. But in making this statement, and also in declaring that the Cremona varnish was a spirit varnish on top of an oil one, he erred signally. Exactly the reverse is the case, the grounding of the Cremona violins being probably gamboge dissolved in spirit and the varnish an oil one. Amber has been made into varnish for at least 150 years—probably much longer—and applied to various purposes, but for covering violins it has been made by Dr. George Dickson, Edinburgh; James Whitelaw, 496 St. George's Road, Glasgow; James Hardie, 117 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh; C. & Wm. Caffyn, 30 Chaplin Road, Willesden, London; Alfred Rathbone, 20 Alfred Place, West, South Kensington, London;
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