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Author
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Topic: submerged wood
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jjgms
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 06:52 AM
   
Ok you guys, I'm not a luthier, but love guitars. Couple questions: have any of you worked with that antiqued submerged wood from the Great Lakes? S'posed to be as good as the stuff Strativarious (sp?) worked with. If so, whats up with that? Why havent we seen more info on it? Is it really THAT good? Thanks |
C. Vega
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 07:06 AM
More sales hype than anything else. There is no magic wood. Stradivari didn't have any either. |
Paul Hostetter
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 08:45 AM
The theory of Stradivari's allegedly submerged wood was devised by a crackpot in Texas who eventually gave up on the idea himself. The one good thing I can say about the guy is he got the woo-woo world of armchair lutherie experts to take their frozen gaze off Strad’s varnishes and onto the wood underneath it, which was helpful. For instrument making, the thing about submerged wood is that the years of submersion basically lighten the wood without messing with the structure much. The favored violin maple, for example, is lighter, softer stuff, and definitely not hard or "rock" maple. A lot of the submerged maple was eastern rock that was transformed by fate into a lighter form. Some of it looks nice too, but much of it is drab or bluish, and like most woods, it is variable. Being submerged is no more guarantee of tonal interest than being a live tree harvested in the forest. Some of it is great for instruments, most of it is good for bowling alleys and butcher blocks. The other thing about submerged wood is, as Charles points out, sales hype. A few outfits have gotten into salvaging this stuff, and I applaud their efforts because a lot of otherwise wasted wood is being used. But it’s still just wood. |
C. Vega
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 09:39 AM
There have been more myths and theories put forth over the years about Antonio Stradivari than perhaps any other craftsman in history. And like Paul stated, many of them have been perpetuated by total wackos who had never actually seen, much less handled or played, a Stradivari instrument. And they keep on coming.
Other makers of Strad's time had access to the same materials, and many were quite successful in using them, but the most plausable explanations of Stradivari's "secrets" tend to more or less say that he was simply an exceptional craftsman who possessed the skill and knowledge to use the materials he had to their best advantage.
No more, no less.
[This message has been edited by C. Vega (edited 07-05-2004).] |
Hoser Rob
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 09:55 AM
Here's a great article on Strads:
http://physicsweb.org/article/world/13/4/8
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Paul Hostetter
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 10:39 AM
This article is pretty typical of the approach scientists take to explain how a violin might work, and while it’s interesting and to an extent accurate enough, it’s much like the three blind men and the elephant. And this is only one of the blind men. |
Bert Foster
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 11:30 AM
I once read an article and I don't remember where or whether it was fact or fiction but it stuck in my mind as having good logic. The article stated that Stradivari was the son of a nobleman who was harbor master at a large port in Italy. This afforded Stradivari the where-with-all to obtain anything he wanted in the way of raw materials from other continents. It was said he got to look at any ships manifest as soon as it docked allowing him first crack at the goods. Also being the son of a nobleman he was wealthy and could afford to travel and did travel visiting violin builder's guilds all over Europe and the article said he stole several first bench apprentices from some of those shops. That wealth also gave him the means to buy the finest tools of the day or have them commissioned. The article also mentioned that his father was ashamed and embarrassed by him because he took up a trade instead pursuing whatever the sons of noblemen pursue. It supposedly caused quite a stir in the community and increased publicity because someone of his status in society devoted his time to a tradesman's craft. Like I stated in the beginning I can't remember where or whether the article was truth or just a surmised fictional account of his life and the reason for why his violins were such an anomaly from the git-go. |
Paul Hostetter
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 03:18 PM
Depending on who you read and choose to believe, Antonio Stradivari was born in either 1644, 1649 or 1650, maybe in Cremona, though probably not because his family was on the run from the Plague. His parents were Alessandro Stradivari and Anna Moroni, and that’s all anyone knows. The harbormaster story sounds like en embellishment on the "logs floating in the harbor" story that the Great Wazoo from Texas came up with. Scientific American printed some of this guy’s stuff, and got caught with their pants down. Don’t believe everything you read! Stradivari is the plural form of Stradivare, a Lombard variety of Stradiere, which means a toll-man or douanier, a feudal official who was posted on the strada or high road for the purpose of exacting tolls from passengers. But this is a derivation of an old name in that town, not a description of Strad’s pop’s job, by any means. I got this from the New Grove "Dictionary of Music."  |
jwrigley
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 03:36 PM
Paul,
Ther's a pub quiz on in my local next week, will you be on my team? 
Jason |
resophil
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 04:06 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Paul Hostetter:
Depending on who you read and choose to believe...,
A friend of mine who owns a music store that specializes in violins and all other things fiddle-ish, says that they get a couple of fiddles in every week for valuation by people who are convinced they have a Strad: "It's a genuine Stradiwarius....!" "Really? You don't think that those Chinese characters in there on the label might have a bearing on that?" -Phil BTW, Paul, HTML alert!!! Your character set has been acting up all day! |
C. Vega
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 04:49 PM
More recent scholarship has determined that Stradivari probably spent his entire life in Lombardy and lived and worked for 57 years in the same house in Cremona. It's doubtful that he did much traveling.
Records have also come to light that show that Alessandro Stradivari, the supposed father of Antonio, died in 1630...a good number of years before Antonio's birth. There seems to be less known today about his ancestry than previously thought. |
Paul Hostetter
Member
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posted 07-05-2004 11:02 PM
Phil: HTML alert!!! Your character set has been acting up all day!I know, but how do you know? (I’m too lazy to reboot). Charles Vega: Records have also come to light that show that Alessandro Stradivari, the supposed father of Antonio, died in 1630...a good number of years before Antonio's birth. Not according to any of my sources. Al didn’t die in 1630, he and the entire family left Cremona (as did everyone else) in 1630, because of the Plague which followed a terrible famine of 1628-29. This is why they have no record of Tony’s birth there; it wasn’t there. He obviously was born after 1630. They don’t know where any of them went, or even when or how Tony reappeared in Cremona. Check this.
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stefan
Member
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posted 07-06-2004 04:22 AM
Hi- interesting thread here One thing that puzzles me about Antonio: I read in one of the tomes on his work, that instruments from a certain period of his life are 'considered' to be superior to the rest. One would think that skills in making the instrument and choosing timber would only improve with age, at least until the physical signs of aging messes with you. This would perhaps point in the direction, that timbers were not the cause of the greatness of his instruments (although he was very particular - starved alpine spruce, harvested from a slope facing..whichever way it was - but rather that 'inspiration' failed? Also, I belive to have read, that many of his better instruments were built rather quickly, due to finanicially imposed time restraints. I hope i'm not mixing in stuff about Guarneri or Amati here, I'm a guitar guy myself. Correct me if I'm wrong. But does anyone have some thoughts on the reason why a certain period of his life (and not necessarily the happiest..) apparently produced the finer instruments? /stefan |
C. Vega
Member
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posted 07-06-2004 04:46 AM
The information given by Marshall C. St. John on the Cello Heaven page that was linked in Paul's post is an excerpt, including the illustrations, of the information put forth by the Hill brothers in their book on Stradivari that was written in 1902.
While the Hills were considered "the" authorities of their day and much of their research into the Cremonese makers is still regarded as gospel, more recent studies have shown that they were sometimes mistaken.
Old church and municipal records, etc. sometimes contradict each other and others are no longer in existence, especially those from those tumultuous years of famine, war and plague in 17th century in Italy.
The questions about good old Al and Tony will probably keep the hardcore scholars amused for many years to come.Whatever the answer to this may be, the original question was about submerged wood and I still think that's largely nonsense. stefan-
Stradivari's so-called "Golden Period" is generally considered to be from about 1700-1720 when he was at an age where many would have been considering retirement. He died in 1737 at the age of 93 or 94 and apparently worked right up until the end. The later instruments, according to "those in the know", do show some signs of failing eyesight and some loss of manual dexterity but they certainly don't show signs of hasty work.
Stradivari changed his designs several times over the years, sometimes reverting back to earlier ones for certain instruments. His earliest instruments are referred to as "Amatese" as they resemble the small pattern instruments of Nicolo Amati, who is generally believed to have been his mentor, though there is also some debate about this amongst the experts. He later, in the early 1690s, developed what are referred to as his "Long Pattern" instruments and a bit later made violins along the lines of the larger "Grand Amati" instruments, all the while constantly refining the outline, arching and other aspects of his designs.
Some of the work of Joseph Guarneri (Del Gesu) sometimes appears to have been rather rushed but the work by members of the Amati family is generally very clean, elegant and precise.
[This message has been edited by C. Vega (edited 07-06-2004).] |
Dregs
Member
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posted 07-06-2004 01:45 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Paul Hostetter:
The theory of Stradivari's allegedly submerged wood was devised by a crackpot in Texas who eventually gave up on the idea himself.
If by "crackpot in Texas" you mean Dr. Joseph Nagyvary, recently retired from Texas A&M University, he still holds on to the submerged wood theory. Per his website - "In his seminal paper he postulated that the three critical aspects of materials requirements are (1) the soaking of the wood in sea water, (2) the use of soluble plant fiber as the filler, and (3) the anchoring of the varnish with a fine mineral powder. In the past 20 years, however, all of Nagyvary’s postulates have been experimentally verified and most materials of the old Italian violins have been identified." http://www.nagyvaryviolins.com/index.html Here is an interesting story of a blind test in front of 600 people between a Strad and one of his violins.
http://agnews.tamu.edu/dailynews/stories/BICH/Sep2203a.htm Or are you talking about some other crackpot? |
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