Wednesday, March 02, 2005
I just read an interesting article about Antonio Stradivari, the stringed instrument maker from which we get the so-called "Stradivarius" violins and other similar instruments.
It says if you think you have one, you most probably don't. He only made about 1100 instruments in his lifetime; most were violins, but not all. More than half of all those instruments survive, 512 of them are violins and they are ALL accounted for.
They even know what happened to most of the violins that were lost.
(A good number of them were lost in the bombing of Dresden; others went down in ships, got sat on, etc.)
There are however, literally MILLIONS of copies. Some are so good they can only be detected by appraisers who know what they're doing.
Others go out of their way to say they're authentic looking copies but that doesn't keep people from thinking what they want to think.
All of this got me thinking.
Yes, Stradivari was a great violin maker. That we know. But I'm willing to bet you this:
His first violin sucked.
Think about it. The first thing YOU made in wood shop looked like shit. Your mother only put it in the kitchen 'cause it held cookbooks and to that end, it covered the bulk of the wooden atrocity that you got a "C" on from Mr. Reynolds (or Mr. Loomis -- wood shop teachers all have DAR-approved American names like Reynolds and Loomis) the bloated gearhead drafting teacher who worked with tools every day, and couldn't hear worth shit because he always had the buzz saw on. All I ever wanted to do in wood shop was try to make a fucking baseball bat. But would they let us do that? NO! It's the old ugly bookshelf for you.
MY bookshelf was so atrocious it ended up in MY room. Also my mom didn't have a lot of cookbooks.
But think about that first Stradivarius. He probably didn't even sign his name to it. He probably went, "Gad, this is fucking impossible! Why did I decide to learn how to do this? This thing is lopsided, it's got splinters, it sounds like a dying beagle...fuck it. I wanna go meet girls." Then he tossed it in the trash, went out to the bar and eventually got pooched by an Italian hottie named Mona.
Yep. The very first Stradivarius probably ended up in the dumper. And a few more with it, I bet.
Hell, would you want the first Martin guitar? Not me. There are Martin guitars TODAY that I wouldn't want. The good ones are great but the bad ones can drive you nuts.
I probably woulda sent the Wright Brothers back for more testing after Kitty Hawk too.
TT
It says if you think you have one, you most probably don't. He only made about 1100 instruments in his lifetime; most were violins, but not all. More than half of all those instruments survive, 512 of them are violins and they are ALL accounted for.
They even know what happened to most of the violins that were lost.
(A good number of them were lost in the bombing of Dresden; others went down in ships, got sat on, etc.)
There are however, literally MILLIONS of copies. Some are so good they can only be detected by appraisers who know what they're doing.
Others go out of their way to say they're authentic looking copies but that doesn't keep people from thinking what they want to think.
All of this got me thinking.
Yes, Stradivari was a great violin maker. That we know. But I'm willing to bet you this:
His first violin sucked.
Think about it. The first thing YOU made in wood shop looked like shit. Your mother only put it in the kitchen 'cause it held cookbooks and to that end, it covered the bulk of the wooden atrocity that you got a "C" on from Mr. Reynolds (or Mr. Loomis -- wood shop teachers all have DAR-approved American names like Reynolds and Loomis) the bloated gearhead drafting teacher who worked with tools every day, and couldn't hear worth shit because he always had the buzz saw on. All I ever wanted to do in wood shop was try to make a fucking baseball bat. But would they let us do that? NO! It's the old ugly bookshelf for you.
MY bookshelf was so atrocious it ended up in MY room. Also my mom didn't have a lot of cookbooks.
But think about that first Stradivarius. He probably didn't even sign his name to it. He probably went, "Gad, this is fucking impossible! Why did I decide to learn how to do this? This thing is lopsided, it's got splinters, it sounds like a dying beagle...fuck it. I wanna go meet girls." Then he tossed it in the trash, went out to the bar and eventually got pooched by an Italian hottie named Mona.
Yep. The very first Stradivarius probably ended up in the dumper. And a few more with it, I bet.
Hell, would you want the first Martin guitar? Not me. There are Martin guitars TODAY that I wouldn't want. The good ones are great but the bad ones can drive you nuts.
I probably woulda sent the Wright Brothers back for more testing after Kitty Hawk too.
TT
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