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Whole German Towns That Do Nothing But Make These Instru ments. No musical instrument is deserving of greater care than the violin. A good one will last for centuries and improve with age, says the Youth’s Companion. A newspaper writer tells something of the people who make the best violins in Markneukirchen, with its surrounding villages, Klingenthal, Fleissen, Rohr bach and Graslitz, in Saxony, where there are about 15,000 people who do nothing but make violins. ‘The inhab itants, from the little urchin to the old gray-headed man, the small girl and the old grandmother, are all engaged in making some parts of the fiddle. A good instrument consists of sixty two different pieces. The older men make the finger-board from ebony and the string-holder of the screws. The small boys make themselves useful by looking after the glue pot. A man with strong, steady hands and a clear eye puts the different pieces together, and this is the most difficult task of all. The women generally occupy them selves as polishers. This requires long practice, and a family having a daughter who is a good polisher is considered very fortunate. Even a young man, when he goes a-wooing, inquires whether the young girl is a good polisher, and if she is, it certainly will increase his affections for her at least twofold. The polishing takes a good deal of time, some of the best violins being twenty and thirty times polished. Every family has its peculiar style of polishing, and never varies from that. There is one that makes nothing but a deep wine color, another a citron color, yet another an orange color, and so on.
Newspaper Details
Saint Paul Daily Globe
Saint Paul, Minnesota, US
Sun, Jan 22, 1888
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Matthias T.
DE 14 Sep 2026
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