Arts and Materia

Cremona Revival Table of Contents Page //

Historical Making and Preliminary Topics
        1) --- Measurements & Proportions
        2) --- Instrument Shapes: Origins and Evolving Geometry
        3) --- Arts & Materia
        4) --- Making Traditions

 

--- Arts & Materia

Instrument making uses many materials and physical processes.  Here we will look at these things in terms of the historical arts and industries. 

Our focus is the Northern Italian culture that gave us the violin family.  But, we will also look more broadly at historical European art methods and materials. 

The aim here is to escape the assumptions of our modern material culture and to open an understanding of the older physical methods and materials.  After all, the great classical violin family instruments that we so highly revere are products of the older arts, not of modernized later methods. 

So, how does the old instrument making fit into the broader scheme of art history and the slow development of its methods over time?

To greatly simplify, the arts show several large scale shifts over the centuries. 

One very big shift is from the medieval methods of painting with colors in egg yolk, or similar ‘tempera’ painting methods, to the later methods of ‘oil painting’.  The great historical instrument making originates during this transition. The instrument making benefits both from the older principles of ‘tempera’, and from the use of linseed and other drying oils.

A second very large shift was from materials prepared in the workshop to commercially prepared materials. This is perhaps a later shift, and one that helped sweep away the older instrument making ways.

Also, we will look at how the older methods built up effects in layers.  The idea of a ‘one coat’ or ‘one pot’ approach belongs not to the old ways but to the later commercialization of art materials into a modern industry.

 

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The materials of the older arts were close to nature.  And, the methods of the diverse arts were less separated than we might expect today. 

For example, the tanner, the dye, the painter, the builder, and the gilder all made use of a ‘lime pit’ and its products. Such lime pits were once common, serving many purposes.

Tanners and dyers used the milky white alkaline water from the pits in their processes.  The lime putty settled at the bottom of such pits was scooped out and used as a principle ingredient in the mason’s stucco, and the artisan’s gesso.  

As with other materials of the old arts, the products of a lime pit were close to nature, exploited for their natural properties, and used since ancient times.

Not to say that significant work and knowledge weren’t needed to bring forward the usefulness of such materials.  Limestone was quarried and crushed and baked in a furnace or firing pit to create ‘quicklime’ --‘quick’ as in ‘lively’.   This quicklime was then ‘slacked’ with water.  This slacking of quicklime releases a great deal of heat energy and can be violent and dangerous if not handled carefully.  The basic method is to pour the quicklime into a pool of standing water, but in small enough quantities to be safely managed.  The slacked lime settles to the bottom as lime putty.  Over weeks or months, the lime putty is periodically raked and stirred up to make sure all of it is thoroughly slacked, with no little pockets of quicklime hiding in the putty.  The water above the putty becomes alkaline.  Disturb the putty below, and the water goes cloudy with lime, giving us ‘lime milk’.  Where the lime water and oxygen interact, calcite crystal will form.

From the most ancient times, artisans and craftsman understood the special nature of limestone.  Natural lime is a stone that can be broken down to make a putty that can be shaped, and that will then harden again into a sort of refined stone.  Gypsum is a different material and chemistry, but it offers a similar cycle and usefulness.   People learned a great many uses for lime and its products.  The lime water and milk can for example be used to clean and tan leathers.  Limewater is a natural alkali, giving it many uses.  Another even stronger alkali is had by mixing ashes from certain kinds of wood fire with water, making potash or lye.    

Even millennia before the time of chemists or alchemists, people observed nature and learned to make use of materials, exploiting their special natures.  Many of these things, like the uses of lime, are really quite sophisticated.

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Even before humans were fully human, artisans have known to make sophisticated use of special natural materials.

In cave paintings, we see works using colored earths, white chalks, and blacks from soot and coal.  Remarkably, these materials have persisted as important useful colorants in the painter’s pallet ever since.

When Pliny the Elder in his Histories and Vitruvius in his Books of Architecture give lists of colorant recipes from the practices of Greece and Rome, their recipes include the same colored earths, chalk whites, and blacks from the cave paintings. The long development of the historical arts was a continuation and expansion on truly ancient core knowledge.

To help us learn the ways of the old arts, a scattering of early European texts survive, intended to teach aspiring artisans the best and most important of these methods and materials.

From around 1100 AD, a Germanic monk writes under the name Theophilius.  His ‘Of Diverse Arts’ teaches us the arts from the roots up.  He starts with building a furnace, then metal work and tool making.  He carries through with a wide range of art and craft methods, including painting.  Around 1400, we have ‘The Book of Arts’ from Cennini, which aims to give a solid education in the painting and decorative arts as they were in Florence at the time.  These two books stand out, as they give a more whole picture than other texts.  Each of these two texts overtly expresses the intent to set the sincere student on a good path to the learn best ways of the arts. 

We have an increasing number of art texts available as time goes forward. However, most of these are more lists of recipes rather than full guides.   

From c1520, a text of ‘Diverse Secrets’ from the St. Marco library in Venice merits attention from instrument makers. This ‘Marciana Manuscript’ gives many recipes, including oil varnishes for instruments. This gives perhaps our most direct window on the ideas and state of varnish making in the region and time that gave us the violin family.

 Around 1680, we get our most detailed descriptions of general woodworking tools and methods from Joseph Moxon in England, in his various publications of ‘Mechanical Exercises’..

Authors since ancient times also created descriptive lists of special materials and their usefulness in everything from medicine to jewelry. Such books and list were generally titled ‘Materia.’

Besides texts, we can learn from iconography, and from the actual surviving works of the artisans. 

With some materials and processes, we have multiple consistent accounts from different authors, regions, and times. With other aspects of the arts, we might have only one surviving account.  Then too, some art processes we can observe used in surviving art works, yet we have no written accounts at all.  Sometimes, we can observe a process used in multiple disciplines, but perhaps only one craft will have a written account.

Traditionally, this kind of knowledge was passed along within a craft, to some extent as a trade secret. Coming out of medieval times, there was a system of guilds, masters, and apprentices. That is also why so many of the texts have titles like ‘diverse secrets’.

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Let’s take Cennini’s lead into these old art methods. 

After some first words about his own training and heritage back to Giotto, and about the value of a lofty enthusiasm for the profession, and the importance of learning from a master, Cennini then states that drawing and painting are the basis of the profession.  Okay.

Then he begins. Not to teach drawing, but to teach the preparation of drawing surfaces.

Take a little panel of boxwood 9 oncia square in each direction.  Wash clean with water.  Rub smooth with the cuttlebone that jewelers use for casting.  Prepare a paper pouch filled with fine ground calcined bone.  When ready to draw, stir up the bone with saliva and spread all over the board with your fingers.  Tap the back of the board with the finger tip of your hand until you see all is dry.  You will get an even coat of bone all over the board.  Only later does he then talk about drawing on this surface with a silver stylus.

From our modern view, most of this requires explanation.  From his viewpoint, he does explain some of it. He teaches how to choose the right chicken bones, and then how to cook them until ‘whiter than ashes’. And, he explains details about grinding them well, the best kind of grindstone being porphyry. 

But, he doesn’t need to explain ‘the cuttle that goldsmiths use for casting’.   Today, we don’t need to explain sandpaper. Then, sandpaper didn’t exist. Instead, to smooth wood, peopled scraped it with sharp iron blades.  Pumice stone, horsetail reeds, and cuttlebone were common useful abrasives for further smoothing the wood.

Cennini continues to teach how to produce a perfectly smoothed and evenly ‘toothed’ surface for dozens of circumstances.  And, layers and grounds are always the way he builds up to a smooth surface for the art itself.

His lessons are about the layers needed to develop a good ‘ground’, and then the layers that build up to make the art work itself.  Everything is about which layers to create when to give this or that result, and about how to mix or 'temper' materials for each layer.

Ultimately, a great deal of his book is about materials and their ‘tempering’, the subject of mixing materials for various purposes.  Knowledgeable mixing gives the difference between a thick gesso prepared to fill cracks in a carving versus a fine gesso sottile for delicate purpose, like adding some subtle three dimensional elegance under a calligrapher's vibrant  colors. Small differences in preparations and usage of the basically the same materials can yield hugely different results.   In the old arts, such differences were navigated not by the modern of approach of carefully measuring and controlling recipes precisely, but by the old ways of a knowing artisan's hand tempering mixtures by touch and eye.

Cennini does advise the novice to continue drawing and to learn variously by copying masters, drawing from life, drawing the hand, and developing a daily habit of drawing.  But most of the book is about preparing and tempering materials from scratch. He teaches the tempering of materials for various purposes, and the various layers that build up various kinds of art work.

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Cennini introduces a great range of materials used in the arts, always discussing the nature and handling of these materials.  

Even his first discussion of the calcined bone and saliva introduces materials.  Here, the calcined bone is a kind of ‘white ground’, and the saliva is being used as a ‘binder’.  In the course of his book, he introduces many different kinds of grounds, and different kinds of binders.

The idea of a ‘white ground’ is simple, most anything white and grindable.  Likewise, a binder is simply something that can be mixed into grounds that will then dry and hold in place.  Binders tend be sticky substances, so overlapping with the idea of adhesives.  Honey for example can both bind colors, and be used as adhesive in gilding gold leaf. 

Binders are further distinguished by the solvents that thin them.  Proteins, starches, gums, and sugars for example can be thinned with water, as can egg yolk.  Certain oil things will dry and maker good binders.  But, generally these can not be thinned by water.  Other oils, or certain spirits are need to thin most of the oil binders.

Colorants primarily divide into pigments and stains.  Pigments are colorants that are grindable.  These can then be tempered into paints by mixing with a binder.  

Stain and dye colors however are different in nature, they aren’t naturally grindable, but can be dissolved by the right solvents.  Such dissolved colors can then be used to stain or dye other materials.  But, this tends to be more complicated than handling pigments.  Stain and dye colors will often fade, and may not take hold on a material in the first place.   The use of stains can involve other materials called ‘mordants’ to bite into a material and help stains attach.  Still other materials might help ‘fix’ a stain so it resists fading.  Stains can also sometimes by preserved from fading by encasing them in a fitting binder. With some stains, these extra helper ‘mordants’ will also change the stain color.  Alum for example tends to brighten colors, while iron ‘saddens’ colors.

We can stain and dye clothes, leathers, wood, and most anything.  But for painting, we need grindable colors.  To use stain colors in painting, we first dissolve the color into a solvent or binder, we then use that to stain something grindable like chalk or clay.  Good colors can also be made by staining a solution of alum, and then precipitating out the colored alum.  

The old lore of colorants and general materia is vast. 

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So far, we’ve introduced many of the component elements of the old arts.   Now, lets walk through the usage of these things in a few basic scenarios.

>> To Make a Tracing Paper <<

Take the parchment to a parchment worker and have them scrape it thin until barely holding together, but scraped evenly.  Then take linseed oil and wipe it all over and let dry. 

This illustrates the technique of making things transparent by penetration and wetting with an oil material, like linseed oil.  We see variations of this idea discussed in various art and craft texts.  We also see a flip side version. Cennini for example advises care with the oil varnishes, as they will ‘rule’ anything, that is they can sometimes penetrate into a work an make it transparent, instead of providing a protective coating.  When transparency and penetration are desired, we are often enough advised to apply the oil hot.

>> To Prepare a Green Tint Paper for Drawing <<

Take ‘half a nut’ of green earth, half that of ochre, half that of white lead, and ‘a bean’ of calcined bone, plus half a bean of vermillion.  Grind these with spring water.  The more you grind, the more perfect.   Now prepare a glue ‘size’.  This is good hide glue heated with water and prepared (tempered) very thinly.  Take a clean good pot to hold the colors and add enough size to flow freely off the brush.  Use a soft brush and apply all over the paper. Let dry well between coats. Apply three to five coats.   Once done, scrape lightly with a sharp blade to remove any little roughness.

This illustrates a few generally important techniques.  One, we again see the ground calcine bone added to provide ‘tooth’ for drawing with a silver or lead stylus.  Also, we are taught here how to make a thin watery glue to use as ‘size’.   ‘Sizing’ materials was a ubiquitous operation in every craft, including woodworking, at least into the beginning of the 20^th century.  Now it’s largely forgotten outside of certain industries like paper production.  Sizing is a way to pull together, firm up, and even modify the surface of a material. Some sort of drying binder is applied in a thinned form and allowed to dry.  A sizing should never be so thick as to glaze the surface of a material.  We are also shown here the method of using pigments as a stain in sizing.  Thin dispersal and fine grinding are important here so the results are not splotchy or gritty, but rather even and as much like a dissolved stain as possible.  

In other texts and parts of Cennini, we also learn the old arts had a technique of levigation to isolate the finest possible particles.  Such methods can even produce what we today call 'nano particles', even though they would instead call them something like 'impalpably fine'.  It is not difficult for example to use levigation to isolate lime putty particles so fine that they dry out to a crust that looks violet in color.  This is because the particles are the size of red light wavelengths, interfering with the red light and giving a violet cast.

>> General Preparation of a Gesso Surface for Painting <<

Here I will not paraphrase direct passages from Cennini, but instead will summarize ideas that are spread through many pages and chapters of his book.

First is to protect from underneath.  Cennini advises brick dust and linseed oil or tar to protect from moisture.  And patches of tin to cover over any iron that might rust up.

Next is secure a good under surface.  With walls, this means a heavy rough coat of lime mortar (limeputty and sand).  Anything greasy or waxy must be well cleaned off, or physically scraped off or covered over.  Cracks in wood must be filled and smoothed.  With altar pieces or panels, any questionable surface can be laid over with canvas.

Once satisfied of a clean good undersurface, we size this all over.  This is repeated several times, allowing to dry well between each sizing.

The sizing is followed by a gesso grosso, which can be either a lime putty or a gypsum plaster.  This is applied smoothly all over.  Once dry, this gesso affords a final opportunity to crisp up and shape the piece.  Scrapers are used to smooth and shape as desired. Other later authors talk of using pumice stone for this smoothing and shaping of the coarse gesso.

The final coats are of fine gesso sottile. This is the same sort of putty, but completely slaked in water.  Then dried and shave off as a fine powder.  Then used in sizing to apply.  This can be washed and rubbed into the gesso grosso to create a fine surface, or applied liberally by brush.  Each coat of sottile is allowed to mostly dry before the next, but not totally.  All this gesso sottile work is done in one day, and into the night if needed, so a slight dampness remaining between coats can help unify these layers.

All the earlier steps are simply about securing and protecting the final sottile coating.  Indeed, Cennini notes that small or fine pieces can simply be given the sottile gesso directly.  

>> How to Scrape Down the Flat Gesso Sottile <<

Let the sottile dry for two days and nights, or longer.  Then, ball up some ground charcoal in a cloth and pounce all over the sottile.   Take some hen or goose feathers and spread the black evenly.  This black will show your progress as you scrape the sottile smooth. 

The art works were then built above such a ground of fine white mineral.  The art works themselves were also built in layers of colors, with awareness of the interaction of layers and light.  Varnish was then a last layer to protect painting work.  

We don’t have written description of the instrument maker processes for finishing instruments.  But, the instrument maker would be drawing their methods and materials from the same range of materials and options as other artisans.

The biggest difference is that instrument makers tended to show off the wood directly, using largely transparent finishing methods, with painting as a secondary and optional decorative resource.

We can expect they used metal scrapers in the late stages of smoothing instruments.  And, we actually have a set of scrapers left over in the old Cremona workshop artifacts, presumably scrapers used by Antonio Stradivari himself. We can also assume that other common abrasives of the artisan would have been used whenever convenient to the work; namely pumice stone, horsetail reed, dogfish skin, cuttlebone, chalk, rottenstone, red rouge, et al.

While today, the idea of taking varnish and applying it directly or nearly directly to wood is common place, it might well not be such a natural idea for a medieval or renaissance artisan.  Rather than entirely skipping the use of a gesso or grounds layer, it would probably be more natural and consistent with general practices of the old arts for an instrument maker to just simplify the grounds procedure to a gesso sottile, and then render the gesso transparent by penetrating it with oil or oil varnish. 

 

 

 

 

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Mostly, we’ve discussed the foundations of classical painting and artisan methods, the protein binder ‘tempera’ methods before oil painting became more wide spread.  But, the rise of oil painting methods is one of the things that developed coming into the renaissance. 

Cennini and the medieval artisans knew of oil painting, and used it for special purposes like painting on iron or metal.  But ‘tempera’ painting predominated. Largely, this had to do with solvents.  The main solvent for working in ‘tempera’ is simply water. Not too difficult to get.  But, for earlier generations, good solvent for oil work wasn’t such an easy thing.  The ‘spirits of wood balsams’, what we call turpentine spirits, weren’t so readily available in those times.   The main early solvent for oils was ‘spike lavender essence’, or ‘lavender oil’.  This was extracted from the male lavender plant.  But it wasn’t as easy to work with as the later turpentine spirits, and it dried quite slowly and a bit softly.  Still, linseed oil and oil varnishes were actually known and used materials during the tempera period.

Painting layers in oil also behave somewhat differently than tempera painting layers.  As oil painting methods became more prevalent, this also created new challenges and opportunities for artisans.   As we noted at various points, oils and oil varnishes tend to impart transparency.   This creates more opportunities to create layers that are colored, but also partially or very significantly transparent.  These are variously known as lakes, glazes, and toning layers.

A very interesting effect of these glaze or lake type layers is that the color we see can depend on the angle of viewing, and on the intensity of light.   In effect, if we view at an angle, or in low light, we will mostly see the color of the glaze itself.  But, if we view such a glaze either in very strong light, or at a straight on angle, we will look through the glaze and see whatever color is underneath!

Not insignificantly, the famous North Italian instrument and violin making flourished in this transition between old art materials and the new oil materials and methods. The older methods were still alive and foundational to the arts and crafts. But, the newer oil methods and materials were increasing available and widespread. Some instrument makers made excellent use of these opportunities.

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We can also turn to modern science in our efforts to observe old instrument making and its materials. However, scientific efforts have often proofed less clarifying that we might hope. 

Part of this is because chemical components and art materia are different things.  In art lore, it’s understood for example that dried linseed oil tends to yellow over time.  Artisans will substitute other oils like poppy seed when they don’t want that yellowing.   But, decades or centuries after application, the chemicals of these different materia look very similar when analyzed.   Likewise, the many different natural resins that distinguish one artisan varnish recipe from another, don’t look so clearly different in later chemical analysis.  Likewise, does a trace of mercury represent Vermillion pigment, and does a trace of arsenic represent orpiment pigment?  Or might these elements represent different things.

Beyond the difficulties in distinguishing different chemically similar materia, matters are complicated by the layering techniques of the old arts.   Is a chemical analysis just mashing all the layers together?  That can greatly confuse interpretations of results.

Were proteins used in old instrument finishes?  Were pigment particles used?  Were particles of mineral grounds used?  With all this basic questions, some studies have concluded yes, some no, and some maybe.  Not so helpful.

It is clear however, that with each if these questions, at least some studies have confirmed these common art materials.  

Only in very recent years have some teams developed non-destructive methods that can resolve materials and spatial location on a fine enough micro scale to enable layer analysis of materials and layers of material usage.  Hopefully more of this sort of research will bring clarity to this area of study.

In this new vein of research, a 2018 study by Fiocco and others looked at a portion of finish on an Andrea Guarneri cello, finding layers of materials include pigment and grounds particles in the wood surface and rising above in layer structures.  These findings are very consistent with general historical artisan methods.

Scientific studies can also illuminate aspects of classical instrument maker wood use. Dendro chronology studies have given a number of interesting results.  For one, people have demonstrated use of wood from the same log by makers in separated locations in Italy, suggesting that at least at times some makers bought wood from traveling specialist vendors. We also have cases were some rings visible on an instrument are dated as little as 7 years before the instrument was made, indicating that makers did not always significantly age wood before use.  Lastly, studies of the materials properties of the wood, density, elasticity, etc, indicate that classical Cremona violin makers did not use particularly exotic or out of the ordinary selections of wood in these basic respects.  The physical proprieties of the wood they chose are generally consistent with the ranges still readily available in the same species and regions as then.

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It is very difficult with both instruments and paintings to dissect exactly everything done to create a particular example.  Some things are easily seen, others details can be deeply mysterious. But, we can reasonable expect that what we see in the old instruments was generally created within the broader typical materials and methods of the artisans.

We can expect that iron scrapers and common abrasives were used.  Sizing and stains should not surprise us.  A good maker would have awareness of glazing and transparency effects.  While perhaps not always used, grounds rendered transparent were likely the normal starting point. A transparent glaze with filler over the ground would not be surprising.  Protective varnish as a top layer is expected.   Decorative painting can be added when desired.

 

 

 

 

Cremona Revival Table of Contents Page //

Historical Making and Preliminary Topics
        1) --- Measurements & Proportions
        2) --- Instrument Shapes: Origins and Evolving Geometry
        3) --- Arts & Materia
        4) --- Making Traditions

 

--- Instrument Shapes: Origins and Evolving Geometry

 

There are many ways to create shapes.

The various methods for drawing or creating shapes have different strengths and natures.  Some methods are very loose, relying greatly on the artist’s eye.  Some are variously assisted mechanically, or rely on various sorts of rules or guides.  At one extreme, we have unassisted freehand drawing.  At an opposite extreme, we have direct mechanical copying from a model or template.

What we see in classical Cremona instrument making leans heavily on the shapes we can making by combining straight lines and simple circle arcs – the shapes drawn from a straight edge and dividers.

Here, we’ll look at various means for creating and using shapes in instrument making.

For modern instrument makers, a very familiar approach is to directly copy shapes from famous example instruments, or from predetermined templates.  Contemporary luthiers talk about making their ‘Messiah’, their version or copy of one of the most famous Stradivari violins. Such copying of old master examples has held a large place in making since around the time of Vuillaume in the 1800s.  Creating instrument shapes for the copyist is a matter of more or less direct imitation of a specific instrument, or at least of an old maker's particular style.

But, how were such instrument shapes originated? 

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We have not a single example of one of the old masters making a ‘copy’ instrument in the modern sense.  The copy approach is a modern approach, divergent from the older methods.

We don't see the old masters copy, nor do we see them even exactly repeat themselves.  They did not make a master template shape and simply repeat that exactly. No. Something else is going on.   

We see a very wide range of instrument shapes, always varied, always individual creations.  At the same time, something shared runs through all the classical work, unifying even the most diverse examples.   

Admittedly, some makers made many very similar instruments, like Nicolo Amati for example.  But, even comparing treble side to bass side, or front to back in a single instrument, we won't find simple equality of shape, we won't find identical symmetry.  And, instrument to instrument we will also find small variations of design detail.  In these classical traditions, each instrument ends up unique and distinct.

So, if the old masters weren't just tracing out templates, or copying prior examples, how did they make their instrument shapes? What both unifies the old classical making, and gives it such freedom?

We will suggest it is a tradition of shapes from simple recipes of compass and ruler design.  Certain patterns of geometry were used for generation upon generation of instrument designs.   We might call these most used patterns ‘design recipes’.  

In later posts, we will also explore how these recipes were interactive and bound up with the making process.  It would be possible to use the old geometry recipes in a modern way, to fully resolve a design ahead of time in full detail.  But, we will find that such an approach contradicts the evidence, and the nature of old Cremona making.  Instead, we will find a back and forth between design choices and the unfolding building process of an instrument.  These old methods yield beautiful results, but by responding and adjusting design during the building process.  These methods don't yield perfect equal symmetry from treble to bass, from back to front, or from instrument to instrument.  Instead, they naturally embed a certain level of variance and asymmetry, just as we see in all the old example instruments. 

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We can uncover these old ‘recipes’ by carefully observing shared patterns of geometry usage across many historical examples instruments. 

When we dig deeply into such observations of geometry in historical instrument making, we find extensive reuse of common geometry patterns across European instrument making in general. In the case of old Cremona violin family work, we find such traditions of geometry extend into basically every feature.

Such recipes present traditional options and structure, but the maker chooses how to actually realize these ‘recipes’ in the course of building a particular instrument. 

In the above illustration, a tradition might consist of makers always beginning a certain feature by placing overlapping circles onto a particular line.  In observing a great many examples of this tradition, we might consistently see makers choosing the distance between the circle centers as ‘one part’ of the circle radius.  

The variable element, the choice, might be ‘which one part’ the radius separates the circle centers.  The tradition is highly structured, but leaves the maker choosing to use a 1 to 3 proportion, versus 1 to 2 or 1 to 4, etc.   And, this choice gives differing results.  Such ‘traditional recipes’ generally have the maker choosing among traditional ranges of options.  

These ‘traditional recipes’ structure the options and the playing field.  But the maker steers and decides how the design will development as an instrument is built.

When taking a broad view across many examples of European instrument making, what we mostly see are slowly evolving traditions based in repeated patterns of geometry based in lines and arcs.   These are the ‘design recipes’.  We will also note that the usage of such recipes evolves over generations of making.   Particular patterns become traditional for specific uses.  But over generations of examples, we will also see variations and complexities of usage extend and develop.  We might recognize this as a ‘cultural evolution’ of the design recipes.

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Consider sound holes for example.  

Iconography shows circles and rectangular cut outs as the simple starting points for sound hole shapes. The circular sound hole is still with us in various instrument types today, both in ‘open’ and ‘grilled’ versions.  

We even have description of a Spanish guild examine requiring the applicant to produce a multilayered ‘rosette’ from scratch, aided only by his dividers.

Here is a 1700c Stradivari guitar example: 

Looking across a broad range of archaic historical instruments, we see a scatter shot of sound hole arrangements, exploring many different possibilities.  In many examples, we see the impetus to co-ordinate the position of sound holes with the stringing arrangement and the bridge.   But we also see sound holes distributed around the bodies of instruments, almost as vents.

 

From even the earliest evidence in paintings, we also see examples with pairs of sound holes on either side of the center line of the instrument, instead of cutting through this center line.  Such pairs of sound holes also tend to create an ‘island’ area where you could quite naturally place a bridge. But in many early examples, the actual bridge placement wanders considerably.

 

 Perdigon the Troubadour and his vielle or fiddle circa 1200 

 

Above, we see a depiction of one of the earliest known famous fiddlers. 

The image is entirely consistent with many similar early depictions.   We see a pair of sort of ‘lune’ shaped sound holes.  The vielle itself has a pear shape outline and a ‘spade’ type peghead. We are likely seeing a flat top to the instrument and a long attached bridge, much like a guitar.   Some of these now archaic features continued in other types of instruments at least into the 17^th century.

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Now, in this 1365 mural from Florence we see a combination of old archaic features, and newer elements that bring us closer toward violin family features. This is an older style ‘Lira da Braccio’, or ‘lire of the arm’. 

We again see a flat arrangement of strings, the lune shaped sound holes, the spade style peghead. But now, we have a fingerboard elevated over the top. We have a ‘tailpiece’ arrangement. The instrument has a waist and a ‘peanut’ rather than pear body shape. And, the painting at least hints that the top may have been slightly crowned or arched in shape. We also have a bridge that appears to simply be placed under the strings and held in place by tension.

If we consider the sound holes and bridge placement, we again see the sound holes and bridge placed in conjunction, but now the sound holes are below the line of the bridge.  And, instead of being arranged at the bottom of the instrument, the whole configuration has been situated just below the instrument’s waist, the narrowest spot across the top.

This begins to show why we talk of ‘evolving tradition’. 

There is a great tendency in the historical instruments to reuse, to reshuffle, to modify the same geometric structures over and over again.  

At a glance, many of the archaic instruments can appear bizarre or exotic to our modern eyes.  But, as we explore more, long lines of development emerge.  

Many the apparent ‘innovations’ in historical instruments turns out to be reshufflings of themes from one family of instruments into another, or the return of some older idea, etc.  The view that emerges is of an instrument making culture that greatly favors repetition of established ideas and methods, along with a slow evolution of preferences and choices in the detailed usage of those materials. 

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You could just freehand those kidney shaped ‘lune’ sound holes.   But, we can also understand the idea of these shapes in terms of circles and arcs.

A simple version of such a kidney shape takes only 4 arcs from the dividers.  The size, orientation, and proportions can be easily and endlessly varied.

What is perhaps more interesting is how directly other early forms of sound holes derive from this same structure.  

The basic idea is to again use circles at either end of the design, joined smoothly on the outside edge, but on the inside we just move things around slightly.   For a pair of sound holes, this creates a more pronounced ‘island’ area between them.

This evolved shape also starts to bring out the smaller circles of each end of the sound holes.  This feature grows in prominence and significance as sound holes evolve. 

 

We see many historical examples of this basic structure.  We also see more elaborated versions. 

 

Among such archaic examples, we also see some that are more directly ‘C’ shaped.  And, as seen in some of the illustrations above, we see others examples that are essentially made from circles an either end, connected by more or less complicated or squiggly line like shapes between.

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To observe the earlier examples, we necessarily rely mostly on paintings and other art work.  But, beginning from the 1500s, we have an increasing number of surviving actual instrument examples to observe.

Made possibly before 1550, we have this fine instrument by Giovanni Maria, originally from Brescia, but later working in Venice.   

 

(At the Ashmolean Museum)

Notice, the C shape sound holes of this instrument bring together many things we saw in earlier iconographic examples.  Moreover, the geometry of these C shapes is a variation on the simple ‘lune’ shape geometry we saw in very archaic examples.  Variations of this sort of C shape are seen in many instruments. 

And, not only is this shape an evolution from the simplest early beginnings, we shall see that the later F shape sound holes are merely an evolution from this C type shape.

Here, we can observe some of the ‘what’ elements of this sound hole design.  

We can observe that the design consists of circles at each end of the sound hole, and then an assemblage of arcs creating the shape, and two small cuts to finish out the notch shape.

With some care, we can analyze the various components building the sound hole shape.

 

This illustrated analysis of the Giovanni Maria sound hole not only shows a structure of arcs and lines geometry, but it also shows choices of strong proportional relationships organizing that structure.  

The ‘eyes’ or circles, shown as 1), are equal in size to each other.  In item 2), the arcs coming off the eyes have radius exactly x2 the diameter of the eyes.   In turn, the long arc joining these elements has a radius exactly 3x times these.  So, the radius for the long arc is 6x the diameter of the eyes.  In item 4), we see further arcs added coming from the eyes to form the stem of these sound holes.  These new arcs have the same radius as the long joining arc.  They are 6x the eye diameter.   In item 5), the sound hole is finished by adding a ‘notch’ formation to the stem of the sound hole.  The main arcs forming this notch have radius 2x the eye diameter.  Thus they match the first arcs that come off the eyes.   As a last detail, the end of the notch is given a further little sharp peak with some small additional cuts.

Interestingly, the later F style sound holes derive very directly form this C style geometry structure.  If we merely flip around a half portion of this C style, we get the basic form of the old F style sound holes.

 

 

This flipped around C type of F sound hole is the geometry structure of the F hole designs seen in early Brescian masters like Zanetto. Just a little later, we the very same geometry in Andrea Amati's earliest work. Further, this F as a flipped version of the archaic C sound hole is the starting point design for all the sound holes that developed in the course classical Cremona making.

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In a similar ways, we can see a few ‘evolving threads’ of development running through the historical body shapes used.

Sticking just to stringed instruments with necks, let’s see if we can’t find some orientation amidst the ‘zoo’ of historically instrument shapes.

1)    Perhaps most basic, we have various rectangular or boxy shaped instruments:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2)   We have various more or less ovoid and pear shapes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3)  Over time, we increasingly see designs with some sort of waist introduced:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4) And, we see a sort of side line of more elaborately shaped ‘leaf’ or festooned body shapes:

 

 

 

 

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Now, let’s consider some common elements running through this wildly diverse range of archaic and historical necked stringed instruments.

The rectangular shapes are in a sense the simplest.  Such rectangular shapes perhaps played a bigger role in Medieval times and into the Renaissance, but such designs still appear occasionally.

 

A small Italian 'violette' painted by Costa

The principle characteristic of this sort of design is that you can very obviously ‘frame’ the body design in a rectangle.   Further, such a rectangular frame intrinsically has some proportional aspects, like a length to width ratio, and a mid length line. 

Here is illustrated a rectangular design, with the bridge line place midway along the body length, and with simple rectangular sound holes placed on 4ths across the body, just below the midway/bridge line. This design would be fitting for a Medieval Cythara.

We don’t often see actual unrelieved rectangle instrument bodies.  Usually the design is relieved with some arc shapes or other graces at the corners.  We see this 'relieved rectangle' in both the Medieval French cythara and the Renaissance Italian ‘violette’ shown earlier.

 

Such rectangular body designs are perhaps the simplest possible.  Yet, even when not the overt instrument shape, we can consider a ‘rectangular frame’ around any instrument, helping reveal aspects of its design. 

Here, we look at the idea of a rectangular frame imposed around an ovoid body shape:

 

We’ve taken the further step of emphasizing the upper and lower regions of the design by showing square ‘frames’ drawn from the top and bottom of the design. 

In this case, these upper and lower ‘framing squares’ overlap, revealing a natural midsection to the design. 

 

When an instrument's body length is than double its width, then the upper and lower ‘framing squares’ won’t overlap. Instead, they will create a gap. But again, these squares reveal a naturally defined midsection to the overall design. 

 

Designs based very directly on rectangles and box shapes occur here and there in the historical examples. Many more instruments are not though. However, imposing such rectangular frames around any instrument design can be very revealing.

Consider this illustration.  The sound holes are sized in relation to circles with a diameter 1/3 the width of the instrument.  The upper sound hole pattern is centered in the upper framing square.  The lower sound hole circle sits on a line ½ up the lower framing square.  The bridge line sits 1/3 up this lower framing square.  The narrowest point of the body, the waist, sits at the bottom end of the upper framing square.  And on it goes.

These patterns are not the exceptions, but the most general and readily observable trends running through the evolving historical instrument designs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Consider now the development of those beautifully curved instrument shapes that look nothing like ‘rectangular design frames’.

To open up these ideas, let’s first explore a uniquely clear and simple early example, the 1450c lute ‘exemplar’ from Henri Arnaut of Zwolle (in the Netherlands).

This is a rare case where we have an instrument example design that overtly displaying its geometry for us.

The shape has of course length and width, so we can consider a framing rectangle around that.   And, being a pear shape design, we will consider a lower framing square.  I’ve also marked in the waist, which for pear and ovoid shapes is the widest part.

 

Much of Arnaut’s drawing concerns the making of the shell back for this lute.  But, we will focus on the body outline shape and the sound hole.

 

 

Clearly, the bottom curve is simply a half circle arc.  As it turns out, the curves of the top portion start off rising as simple arcs using the waist line as their radius. 

 

 

 

 

 

The very top of this curve consists of a ‘joining circle arc’.

Thanks to Euclid’s geometry rules for smoothly joining circle arcs, the choices for this last bit of curve are already quite limited and structured.  Euclid tells us that for two arcs to join smoothly, the second arc must continue from the old at a point that falls in the same line with the centers of both arcs.  I’ve shown the joining lines here as dashed green lines.

In this circumstance, we could close off the end curve by choose a joining circle arc with larger or smaller radius.  No matter the size we choose, the symmetry of the design will mean our joining arc needs to have its center point fall along the center line of the instrument.  A smaller radius arc will join higher up this center line, yielding a longer body length.  A larger choice will join lower down and give a shorter body length.  So, the instrument designer still has some discretion at this stage.  If the designer had wanted a particular body length, or a particular ratio to the width, that could be easily achieved by choosing this join arc’s center on purpose to create that result.  But we don’t see that in this design.

In this case, the designer chose to set the arc center at the top of the main lower curve’s circle.  

This choice turns out to be revealing.  In proportion to the rest of the design, this choice gives the radius of the joining circle a complicated irrational value.  And, it gives the length of the body a similarly complicated irrational value.  In this design, we see the maker very much working in terms of the width of the instrument, and in terms of that first main circle drawn around the waist of the instrument.  This implies the body length itself was almost certainly just a consequence of the other choices, not a planned end, nor a chosen initial starting point. 

We can also see Arnaut’s choices for the sound hole. He shows us markings dividing the main circle’s radius into 5 parts.  He’s placed the sound hole with a diameter of 3 of these fifths, centered along the radius.

 

 

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So, we’ve made some progress toward understanding the origination of historical instrument shapes.   And, in studying sound hole shapes, we saw how initial shape geometries get repeated, but also get morphed to evolve into a wider range of shapes, developed from the simplest stating points.

Let’s now consider the basic structure of the Arnaut design.  The main structure of Arnaut's design turns out to be very fundamental to most of the historical shapes that evolved in the traditions. The usage of these basic elements can morph to yield a much broader range of historical instrument shapes.

At its most basic, the Arnaut design springs from a waist line with the instrument width marked in.

 

  

He worked the bottom shape of the instrument as a simple half circle arc from this line.

 

 

 

To get an elongated pear type shape, he used some longer radius arcs rising from this same line.   In this case, he used the line itself as the radius for these rising arcs.    

 

 

 

 

 

His pear design structure was then completed and closed with a joining arc at the top. However, the closing off of this shape is less interesting for our purposes than the pattern of line, bottom curve, and rising arcs is. 

From this simple initial geometry structure, many variations are possible.  

Perhaps we want the bottom shape to be broader and squatter, not a simple circle arc. For this result, we can build the shape as arcs from an overlapping circle pattern, with a long radius arc joining across the bottom. 

 

The original structure is made of only 4 arcs. The squatter bottomed variation takes 6 arcs instead.

In a different kind of variation, we can use a 4 arc structure again, but this time to make an ovoid shape, with wide waist more midway. 

 

 

 

We also see a variety of ‘peanut’ shaped designs.  These have both upper and lower wide areas, and a curved waist coming in at the middle area.    

We can create such a shape from these same materials by using incomplete pear shapes.   

We take two of these, and turn one upside down to create the top area curve.  Then we use large radius circle arcs to join these and form a waist.

What we’re seeing is the varied reuse of conserved materials.   

This seems to be one of the deeper characteristics of the old instrument making traditions.  And, this sort of varied reuse of design materials naturally leads to the evolving development of instrument designs we see historically.

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There are several ways we see waists added to designs.   

Some designs have a gentle waist, as with many of the older peanut shape Lira da Braccio instruments. 

But many other historical designs show sharply cut in waist, which in many cases also create corners.  

 As with other aspects of design, the waist curves and resulting corners start from the simplest of materials, then evolving to greater complexity and eventual refinement.

A basic circled arc can be curled in tighter at the ends by using additional smaller radii circle arcs.  This sort of structure can be refined or extended further as desired.

 

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We've seen most of the basic structures now.

Many traditional instrument body shapes are formed from these same geometry structures.

Without resolving all the associated complexities, here are some historical examples with their basic design structures shown:

A 1620c English Cittern with a pear type body and a simple circle arc lower body shape:

 

A 1620s Bass Lute form Venice.  Here we see a pear type body with overlapping circles and a joining arc giving the lower body shape:

 

 

Nest, we have two peanut type bodies.   

The first is a vielle by Giovanni Maria of Brescia, working in Venice around 1533c:

 

And then a 1680 Stradivari guitar:

With the addition of intruding C shape curves at the waist, we get the further shapes of the violin family and the various cornered types of Lira da Braccio.  

The various shapes of the viol family are also closely related, with a slightly different relation to the overlapping circles that are the basis of these designs also.

 

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By observing and analyzing historical examples, we can witness an evolving usage of circle arc and line geometry giving the old instrument outlines.   We can see and replicate the origination of these designs.  

But, is this the full story?  Did they always work a design from scratch, fully working their outlines with dividers and straight edge to get pure geometric results?  

Well, no.   

We see some historical examples where all or parts of the design are roughly executed freehand.   

Some old instruments are very far removed from the disciplines of compass and rule geometry or proportions fairly walked out with dividers.   Still, these are more the exceptions, and appear to at least be imitating designs of arc and line geometry.

Clearly, some of the ungoverned making was simply outside the core traditions.  In other cases, there is the appearance that something starts in one community, with clean good geometry, then gets imitated without the geometry knowledge by makers in other communities.

Regardless, the freehand examples generally appear to be imitative of the outline shapes we see cleanly and geometrically worked in other examples.  The ideas of historical instrument making appear to be ideas drawn from  the simple proportions and geometry available from dividers and straight edge.   

In later posts, we will explore further into the interactions of design, work processes, and the resulting final instruments.

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To close, let’s look at the geometry structure of violin like instruments.  And, for convenience, we can put names to these structures.

‘Violin type’ outlines are peanut shaped outlines with corners added, essentially.   

We can witness the origin of this type of shape as starting from the ‘peanut shape’ of some of the older Lira da Braccio shapes.  The gentle ‘joining arcs’ of the peanut shape’s waist are replaced by C shape center curves that cut in at the waist.  Corners are added.    

We can see partial stages of this evolution of shape in various Lira da Braccio examples from history.

 

For convenience, we can discuss the upper, mid, and lower areas of the instruments.  We can refer to these areas, or the sides and outline curves of these areas as ‘bouts’.  So we have upper, lower, and center ‘bouts’, each with distinct geometry.   We also have corners which in some sense are their own separate constructions on the outline. 

Let us first consider the actual geometry constructions of these shapes.  The upper and lower bouts are based on the same principle constructions, but with some variations of proportions and detail.

These outer bout constructions are all based on overlapping circles, but with different traditions of proportions for different purposes.    

What evolved was a preference to make the upper bout shape rounder, by making the centers of the overlapping circles fairly close together.   But, for the lower bouts, the evolution was toward a squatter shape, by spacing the centers further apart. 

All these patterns of equal sized overlapping circles were known as ‘vesici’.   

To the ancient geometricians, this shape looked like a fish bladder, hence a vesica.   One particular pattern of overlapping circles was given special attention.   When the radii of the circles also equaled the distance between the two centers, then the circles were called ‘twins’, or ‘vesica piscis’.

 

To construct a ‘violin type’ design, we base both the upper and lower bout shapes on vesici.  Usually, we also smooth over the ‘dimple’ from the vesici with ‘long joining arcs’.  

In this illustration, the lower bout is based on 'twins' or 'vesica piscis', because the distance between the circle centers equals the radius of the circles.

In contrast, the upper bout is still based on a vesica, but it isn't a 'vesica piscis', or 'twins', because the distance between the centers doesn't equal the radius. It's less in this case. This proportion of the distance between centers and the radius in a vesica is one of the important maker choices in instrument design.  The traditions expect certain ranges for this choice for certain types of instruments. 

The main structures for the center bouts are just large circles, centered on the waist line.

 

 

 

 

 

We also need ‘riser arcs’ to create curves from the outer bouts toward the center area.  (Just as in Arnaut's pear shape design.)

After this, corners are located and shaped by smaller ‘corner circle’ arcs. A slight gap between these allows creation of blunted corner ends that are more durable than a sharp corner would be.

 

 

Notice that the corner circles don’t fully connect to the rest of the structure, they rather float near by.  As it turns out, the traditional methods developed in ways that guide the placement and size of corner circles in rather complicated ways. Their placement tends to follow other factors, and to absorb asymmetries that develop in the building process. Classical methods do not fully resolve corner circles or corner placement ahead of time, but responsively during the building process.

We will explore these details more in later posts.   But as a result, little joining segments are often needed between the risers and the corner circles, and between the corner circles and the main center bout circles.   These joining segments might at times be freehand, but they are more properly and traditionally resolved as arcs related to the other curves, or with bits of straight line.  The elongated riser sections of Stradivari’s 1717 pochette offers an interesting example of such connecting elements. We see many variations in these connecting components and their sizing, but all within the one primary recipe for violin type shapes.

The choices in our illustrated example here followed an English gamba example from 1580c:

 

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This same general geometry structure is repeated for a vast range of violin type instrument designs.  Variations are mostly a matter of different choices of sizing and proportions using the same geometry structure.  The traditions then are very much about preferences in these choices.  

The old making sticks to common shared recipes of geometry, then evolving and refining their prefers in applying these recipes over generations of making and countless instruments. Just one basic geometry design structure is flexible enough give us both this unusual bass from Gasparo Da Salo in Brescia, and to give us the famous Golden Period instruments of Stradivari.