Books › The Violin: How to Master It, 1880 › scan 20
Scan 20
The Violin: How to Master It, 1880
2 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1violin depends upon much more than the mere varnish. The truth is, that there are dozens of recipes for making amber varnish, the simplest being to melt the amber in one vessel and heat common turpentine in another, and suddenly mix them at a certain temperature. Davidson gives several recipes, and mentions naphtha, which is a native of Italy, as a good solvent for a fine amber varnish. I once spoke to an eminent dealer in London, who informed me that he was often called upon or written to by men professing to have discovered the ancient amber varnish; but after seeing their specimens, he was strongly of opinion that at least part of the secret is lost. It seems to me, judging from that on my own violin and others which I have inspected, that with amber varnish the coating lies like a glassy but mellow and elastic skin on the top of the wood, while spirit varnish is absorbed deep into the pores, and so acts as a damper or clog upon the free vibration of the fibres. The tone imparted by spirit varnish is always hard, wiry, or unsympathetic; that of amber varnish soft and mellow. Next, then, to having a well-made violin is to have a properly varnished one. In the People's Friend will be found a notice of an experimenter—Mr. W. R. Mainds—who believes that he has discovered the real oil varnish used by the Cremona makers, which he thus describes:—"The color is, when thinly spread, golden, and as it increases in thickness it becomes deeper, until it is blood red and beautifully transparent. I have put a violin of my own varnishing alongside some of the finest Cremonas in this country, and the color is identical, while the tone is full, round and mellow." In a communication to me on the subject, Mr. Mainds says:—"There is such a thing as the amber of commerce, but that is not amber, although extensively used in varnish making. Amber proper is a gum of some extinct plant, which, from associating long with minerals, has become so altered or petrified that its original nature is completely changed. The materials I use for my varnish belong to Italy, and would work much better there than in our cold climate. I have
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