Violin-Making: As It Was and Is: Being a Historical, Theoretical, and Practical Treatise on the Science and Art of Violin-Making for the Use of Violin Makers and Players, Amateur and Professional [Hardcover]

Edward Heron-Allen (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 366 pages
• Publisher: Ward Lock Limited; 18th edition (April 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0706310454
• ISBN-13: 978-0706310450
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 4.9 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #655,620 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book for the builder, December 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Violin-Making: As It Was and Is: Being a Historical, Theoretical, and Practical Treatise on the Science and Art of Violin-Making for the Use of Violin Makers and Players, Amateur and Professional (Hardcover)

This book covers everything from wood selection to finish. Includes full size plans for molds. The author also gives specifications of select Stradivarius violins. A must for any builders library!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Difficult to do justice, December 13, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (New York State) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Violin-Making: As It Was and Is: Being a Historical, Theoretical, and Practical Treatise on the Science and Art of Violin-Making for the Use of Violin Makers and Players, Amateur and Professional (Hardcover)

This volume certainly qualifies as one of those rare gems which holds a special place in your bookcase or shop. Heron-Allen manages to give complete detail to all facets of preparation and construction, in addition to holding the reader's attention through numerous footnotes and sidelines. A detailed technical book written in a very enjoyable fashion, and with a style no longer seen. I've been known to read this book on several occasions for pure joy.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Utter bunk but interesting on every page, June 9, 2008

By 

Thomas Fitz Hugh Mace (Louisville, KY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Violin-Making: As It Was and Is: Being a Historical, Theoretical, and Practical Treatise on the Science and Art of Violin-Making for the Use of Violin Makers and Players, Amateur and Professional (Hardcover)

This book, a reprint of Edward Heron-Allen's "Violin Making As It Was an Is," of 1884 is a very poor choice if you don't know the fundamentals of violin making and you really want to learn. For that, you should start with Simone Sacconi's `The "Secrets" of Stradivari,' probably the single most influential book of the past 30 years (available in Dipper's English or Adelmann's German translation from specialist online booksellers, but not, alas, from Amazon.com). If you are an amateur who wants to make an instrument, try one or more of Henry Strobel's books.

That said, "Violin Making As It Was an Is" is still quite an interesting book. Edward Heron-Allen was a rather brilliant Victorian polymath who had an intense interest in the violin. Somehow, he convinced the distinguished French violin maker George Chanot, then working in England, to show him how to build an instrument. The next thing Chanot knew, and apparently to his intense dismay, Heron-Allen was publishing what he had learned in a magazine intended for gentleman amateurs. His book is based on those articles.

What we have, then, is information about 19th-century French violin making reported through the filter of a talented English amateur. From this perspective, the most interesting part to me was the chapter on using a French outer form. I was also curious about the descriptions of tools and some odd older building techniques such as gluing linen to the sides before bending.

If you do read the book, you should certainly be aware that most of it is utter bunk. At the same time, I find something interesting on almost every page and quite enjoy the author's energetic style. Despite it's strange take on the craft, "Violin Making As It Was and Is" has also had a lot of influence, especially on earlier generations of English makers, who in a time before the proliferation of violin-making schools, made profitable use of what it had to offer.

Another reviewer mentioned the quip about this being "Violin Making as it Wasn't and Isn't" and that is certainly just. I would merely add Pliny the Elder's remark that there is "no book so bad but that some good might be got out of it."