Violin Forum/Message Board

[John Cadd]

A popular trend today is to faithfully copy every tiny variation in plate thickness .But how do makers achieve that ? Whether it`s the right or wrong thing to do is a separate issue .I would like to know what tools or methods makers use to get the thicknesses as per the diagram . How close to exact can they get ? If a copy is not as great as the original but it has a very similar sound character it must be classed as a success in one way . Not every way ,but still a success . Concert hall performance may be irrelevant if we watch the tragic news .
Just pray for Odessa and the people under fire .

[Michael Darnton]

A good caliper and slow work.
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[John Cadd]

I am still trying to find more information about Alessandro Gagliano ,and today two old Strad magazines arrived from e bay .The larger more up to date magazine has colour photos and indeed more than you will see in a modern Strad poster . The magazine is far cheaper than the poster .
I wanted to mention especially what I noticed about the diagrams that represent the f holes. The clear photos show the wings of the f holes as quite narrow .The diagrams (with wider more robust wings ) must be some standard generic Strad version that gets printed for everything. So comparing photos versus diagrams there is a glaring difference . Maybe this is a not very subtle way to make us all conform .
I still have to hear any violin better than the Gagliano my teacher played . I have heard several famous violinists while living in London and their Strads etc are still no better than the Gagliano . I don`t know even which Gagliano family member made that violin .
The description of some maker`s skill (including Gagliano ) mention that some tools may not have been all that sharp. That did not seem to affect the sound quality. They were not making violins slowly either .
If you used those calipers with a hinge in the middle and two long arms each side you could hold a plate in one hand and draw the caliper across the plate while watching the outer ends . If the ends closed smoothly you left it like that . If the ends opened up again that part needed thinning some more . Then scraping the parts in between where you checked , to smooth it out a bit. Later machinery knocking out school violins would never produce anything interesting as the machines would be set in one way only . Then push them out the door without checking anything .
To find out why so many duff violins were made we should carefully analyse several poor school violins .

[John Cadd]

Edgar Rus has a video where he travels to Venice to personally examine a Testore violin . He has been copying the maker`s instruments for some years . One glaring feature of the violin (in the white ) that he takes with him for comparison is that the white violin looks nothing like the Testore . Is there some impossible force that makes a copier produce a Testore as close as he can get to a Stradivarius ? Even the sound holes look like bad copies .Maybe they were taken from another Testore model . The corners inevitably creep into a curve where the originals want to go straight out . Funny to see lifetime preferences ruining the copy. Just look at the difference in the arching . It`s as plain as the nose on your face . What was he thinking ? (Maybe it will buff out ).
After half a minute I should edit and say --you can accept influences .That`s fair enough. But it`s nowhere near a copy , so why even call it a copy ? Is making a symmetrical scroll instead of one like the original good or bad ? There should be a rulebook for decisions like that . Points for and against for each feature . Lowest score wins ?

[Michael Darnton]

Copying is one of the most difficult making tasks there is, and working only from photos imposes an insurmountable burden for someone who is not already intimately familiar with that specific piece. Restorers have the advantage because they have learned to some extent to ignore their own tastes and make replacement bits that look like what's around them. . . with constant feedback from having the surrounding violin constantly present. And they learn a wide range of techniques to achieve each maker's result rather than relying on only their usual methods twisted around to fit the situation.

When working from photos it's impossible to see the original's arching--one can only get impressions of particular spots. Having knowledge of the maker's general works can be an impediment because there's the risk of filling in the blanks from other violins or mistaken memories of other violins. F-holes in photos are viewed from an angle, not directly on to their own plane, so they look different. Some things are dependent on others in ways that modern makers don't realize. I once watched a famous copyist working on purfling in a corner. He had started with the worn corner that replicated the original and was drawing the purfling line separately rather than tracing it from the original missing outline. It was easier for me, outside of it, but not him, to realize that his purfling line could not have related to the original outline as purfling does. . . he was following the worn outline too much. Not completely, but he was influenced by it too much, and the result was nothing in particular. But he had no strong mental image of the original to follow.

Small details often get filled in by the maker's own style or prejudices. I have a couple of favorite spots where many or most modern makers very consistently think they already know what to do so they aren't checking as closely as they should, especially if they don't habitually make copies, and you will often see these flaws in copies from almost everyone. Makers have a lot of built-in assumptions about f-hole and corner shape and scroll aesthetics that the originals didn't have. Arching is a whole different and complex problem. I've gained a lot of understanding of details by having to develop my expertise in conjunction with being involved in the process of the certification of old instruments, learning to look for the individual assumptions that different makers have about what they are doing.

Then there's the issue of taste. It's hard to turn your own off. Copyists often try to make the original just a little bit better, in their opinion. I see this a lot in arching. The original late Renaissance/Baroque shapes are very different from what appeals to moderns, and modern makers almost always try to make them look just a bit better, more modern as a result. On arching, for instance, they tend to use more modern lines and smooth things out more than the old guys did.

I think the scroll was his worst part (not counting the arch, where he was totally on his own with no information), and that comes, I think, from the difficulty we have in organizing scrolls in our minds. It's the last piece that makers try to perfect and usually where they fail the most in their own work. Copyists consistently fail the most on that relative to everything else. That's because the underlying structure isn't strongly imposed by a known form and the shape of the template is lost in the carving, so the detail of structure becomes several generations lost in the copy. In the body outline you can see in an original exactly where the circles that make it up join together, and if you're smart you can copy that. In heads that information is completely missing, so the job is harder.

I once saw a great illustration of the problem of replication in a book of art fakes. The subject was a Roman medallion about 5 cm in diameter of the three graces (three women in diaphanous, clingy fabric) and a Renaissance copy. The test was to identify the original. I was awed--they were both completely identical. I went for fine details of the lettering because I was used to that from identifying original violin labels, then I went on to other details. There was just NO difference! Then I read the text: ancient Romans--into breasts; Renaissance folks--into bellies. The text said look which detail on each had been buffed by age, and there it was--on the Roman original the finest details of the fabric had been buffed slightly more over the breasts; on the Renaissance copy, the stomach fabric was polished a bit more. That's the kind of problem we're up against.

I have a recent story about the copying problem. Recently I was commissioned to make a copy of a player's instrument. I don't make copies usually, and I didn't know the maker too well, but I knew that instrument well. I also had a very complete set of photos of details. After I'd assembled the body, one day I was looking at the corners. How incredibly poorly I had made the purfling! Should I start over? How could I have done that! Then I went back to the photos. I had apparently been on a non-thinking roll that day, and had done exactly the original, in each specific corner. It was right, but it was SO wrong. Then I went and looked for photos of more violins. I'd done it badly just as he did so well that it really was undistinguishable from his normal style. I guess that day I was just too into it to have my own aesthetics working, too much in the restorer mode, too tied to the photos. If I had been more conscious, I certainly would have toned it down a bit, and I wish maybe I had. That's exactly the problem.
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new blog at my site! http://darntonviolins.com/blog
my work sites: http://darntonviolins.com and http://darntonhersh.com

[John Cadd]

Well you must put all that post into your book on violin making .It is a beautiful description . I should apologise to Rus if my question seemed too much like a criticism of his work . He has a wonderful personality and gives us all a lift . And your last post will give readers in a hundred years a glimpse of your personality too .
One last thought about the Venice museum with the violins. Was the old bloke on the doorstep the full complement of security staff ?