Books › The violin : how to choose one, 1893 › scan 84
Scan 84
The violin : how to choose one, 1893
6 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 80. See the scan on archive.org.
1TO VIOLIN MAKERS.
3A Friendly Warning.
5Before giving the subjoined list of British violin makers as a guide to violin players let me utter a friendly warning to the British violin maker. Within the last 15 or 20 years this delicate art has sprung into life again in this country, and there is only one thing which is likely to crush it—that is, rapacity. Nearly a century ago English violin makers gradually screwed up the prices till Dodd and others were getting £25 for violins and £50 for 'cellos. The natural result was the death of the industry under the competition of cheap German work. Germany is still in existence and violin manufacture in that country has vastly improved, so it bids even more loudly for the patronage of the British violin player, and it will undoubtedly gain it if the old cause should step in to help on the disaster. Oil varnish and carefully selected wood are now the last hold which the British maker has against the German manufacturer, who has even learned to use a soft spirit varnish instead of a hard one. (Many of the second class old Italian makers did the same.) It is also painfully significant that the best dealers in the land now sell these German made instruments. Let the British violin maker, therefore, beware of Rapacity. He may fancy that he is being benefited by charging exorbitant prices, but it is a delusion. The policy is simply suicidal. In compiling the following list, from which I have carefully excluded both prices and criticism, nothing has amused me more than the prices of the different instruments submitted to me, some of which prices were simply horrifying. The fun did not come to me from the value put upon the violins by these makers, but from the fact that the violins, which were charged at very moderate prices, were almost invariably far superior in tone and in finish to the dear ones. If I were to name the highest prices stated by some of the makers, my readers would amazedly gasp out, "What! Are they worth it?" To
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