Personal Considerations on:
THE COLOR OF THE VARNISH AND THE BACKS OF STRADIVARIUS
The Varnish
Antonio Stradivari’s seven cellos, exhibited in Cremona in 2004, showed, beyond their great visual and cultural interest, a great variety of varnish colours. Each instrument had a different color. The exhibition book clearly shows this, even if the colours reproduced by the photos are not entirely accurate.
Excerpts from the exhibition book I made this photomontage which testifies to this great variety of color. Unfortunately, the ex-Batta Stradivarius of 1714, which was not exhibited, is missing. It would have brought the testimony of an unusually thick varnish and especially of an impressive purple red.
This observation of variety of color is particularly interesting, especially when it is the same luthier. One could have imagined that the varnishes would be different from one luthier to another, but not to this extent in the same luthier.
In this image we can see that the two middle backgrounds on the right are from the same year (1732). This is very interesting. This leads us to believe that it would therefore be a deliberate choice of Stradivarius to vary the colour according to his willingness and not a significant varnish of different periods of his life. However, we know that he used fewer varied varnishes at the beginning of his career than he did afterwards. At first its varnish was not very colourful, or even transparent and varied slightly around the amber yellow, exactly like the cello of 1710 (on the left of the photo). In the 1690s he introduced red (see his violin called the “Tuscan” of 1690) and then a few years later, in his period called the “golden”, he used all shades. They range from transparent to dark brown and all shades of yellow, orange and red.
The Backs
On closer inspection, it can be seen that not only the varnish could be of different colours, but also the sub-base. Between the undersides of the two cellos dated 1732, one is yellow and the other red brown. Stradivarius therefore easily switched from light yellow (1732) to light brown (1710) or green-grey (1712) to red brown (1732) according to his desires or according to the wishes of his customers, or even according to the wood used, which he perhaps left free. With its different undersides and varnishes, it can be said that it mastered a vast palette of all possible tones.
This great variety of colour, especially of the subsoil, is typical of the 18th century. It became considerably more uniform during the 19th century and all looked the same by the 20th.
Pure technique, uniformity and symmetry characterize the past century. The 21st marks the return to diversity, to variety, to the philosophy of « never the same thing twice». I would like to call this change of direction « the rebirth of lutherie ».
Currently a profusion of very high level luthiers offer a top-of-the-range personal lutherie in almost every country in the world. The prices of these instruments have only been rising for the past twenty years or so. The musicians understood perfectly where their interests lay. Currently they are investing heavily in this type of instrument to access instruments of incomparable quality and at prices that are still unrivalled compared to an old one.
Examples of two backs
While visiting a collector, owner of two very beautiful stradivari, to get to know and show him at the same time my last two violins, I was surprised by the similarity of my two sub-bases with these prestigious instruments. I had fun putting them next to each other and photographing them under the same conditions. These are not copies, of course. It is a pure coincidence that my two sub-bases are so close to the two Stradivarius that I saw for the first time.
Below are presented two couples of violins.
The light ones to the left and the dark ones to the right. Each couple is formed by one Stradivari and one Girardin. As the light comes from the right, the light violins are even lighter than in objective reality.
Above, the lighter violin’s couple has been placed to the right (in the shadow) and the darker violin’s couple took place in the light. We can observe that now all have almost the same color.
The Girardin react identically to the light as the Stradivari do.
Currently I love to obtain on my own instruments all kinds of variations of grounds and varnishes.
. The difference comes more from the type of wood than from the recipe to be used according to the desired sound. As wood is a “living material that only does as it pleases”, I increasingly let wood react in its own way. I guess it’s part of life that’s not linear or uniform, and that’s fine with me. Either we accept her irregularities or we force her like a bonsai. For me it’s a question of philosophy. Having personally constrained him for about twenty years, I am currently leaving much more room for difference, for particularism. It is also the pendulum of history, sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left. As I said earlier in the 18th century, we were in variety in variety in uniformity in the 20th century, we are returning unstoppable to diversity