Bow & Bridge Violin and bow makers, as the old books printed them

Scan 113

The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1909

8 lines. Read by computer on 1 October 2026. Printed page 71. See the scan on archive.org.

1to fall again. Some have even cried 'Eureka' to the public; but the moment others looked at their discovery and compared it with the real thing,
3 'Inextinguishable laughter shook the skies.'
5At last despair has succeeded to all that energetic study, and the varnish of Cremona is sullenly given up as a lost art."
7Declining, therefore, all speculation as to what the varnish is or what it is not, or any nostrums for its re-discovery, we will pass on at once to the description of the different Italian varnishes, which may be divided into four distinct classes, viz., the Brescian, Cremonese, Neapolitan, and Venetian. These varnishes are quite separable in one particular, which is, the depth of their colouring; and yet three of them, the Brescian, Cremonese, and Venetian, have to all appearance a common basis. This agreement may be accounted for with some show of reason by the supposition that there must have been a dépôt in each city where the varnish was sold in an incomplete form, and that the depth of colour used, or even the means adopted for colouring, rested with the maker of the instrument. If we examine the Brescian varnish, we find an almost complete resemblance between the material of Gasparo da Salò and that of his coadjutors, the colouring only being different. Upon turning to the Cremonese, we find that Guarneri, Stradivari,

The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.