estebanana -> RE: Building a Brescian viola after Gasparo da Salo (Dec. 14 2014 1:32:26)
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Anders, I think you are making to much of a sketch or practice scroll, my intention was to study the tool path needed to make the undercut, is not the same process as making the flat cut of Cremona scroll and I wanted to study the difference. Scrolls, purfling and edge work really tell you where a violin is from. Cremona had a 'look' and Brescia had a 'look'. The degree of finish you choose to put in your own work is highly personal and in the violin craft, unlike guitar making, there is a latitude of what is good and good. Most everyone agrees putting 'mistakes' in the work on purpose is really tricky, you have to have technical facility to make a perfect scroll before you attempt to make one with planned defects in a direct copy. But on the other hand, if you are making sketches and studies as learning pieces, perfection in a study piece does not matter much if you learned a skill. That is why the scroll is not finished, I learned what I needed to know and that was that. I feel the study of regionalism and regional style, or a particular families style is important because each family or region had methods of doing things that helped determine how the instruments looked. Cremona had a specific way of doing edges, Brescia had a specific way of making purflings. Some Cremonese families used dyed paper to make purfling and some used dyed pear wood, etc. all these small details are important to study and study and study because these are the elements that determine how things were done technically. And the whole thing is a puzzle, know a regional method and another piece pops into place. Everyone has their own way of going about making, and really it's just how each person puts together the puzzle. Some pieces fit and some don't. ________ To go on about scrolls in particular, just for anyone who is interested: If you want to study the scroll, look at Amati scrolls, they are far and away the best. But they are tighter in width near the throat and this causes the A string peg, or D on viola/ cello, to be cramped. Stradivari made the scroll wider on the back the "shell" at that point where the spiral and the pegbox area meet. But it is not as beautiful as the taper on the shell of the Amati scroll. The Amati scrolls also show tool work, and Strad worked to scrape out any tool marks. He was really the odd one, probably obsessive compulsive. The Amati family had a method of carving and the design is elegant, they worked carefully at ratio a proportion and did not over refine the work. It was just natural, but careful. The Amati work is characterized especially by the way the the final chisel cut was made in the eye, it looks like a comma. Stradivari did not do that. Amati scrolls look like something that grew on a vine, delicate tendrils that curl. Strad scrolls look more like perfection carved in marble on a Greek temple. In Brescia scrolls look like rolled up newspapers, all beautiful in their own ways.
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