Our intention is to deal only with the artistic side of musical instruments, so we lay no claim to real connoisseurship of musical instruments, more especially as regards the family of stringed instruments which finds its best and most complete expression in the violin. Yet the fact that the great discoveries have generally been made by ignorant men like Tarisio, not necessarily fine musicians, goes to show that connoisseurship of form has its importance, greatly resembling after all, the connoisseurship of other branches in its summing up of various analyses into a final synthesis of form and character. True, in a good violin there is rarely any ornamentation, or if there is, it still more rarely furnishes a clue; but although all is entrusted to simplicity of line and form in its most aristocratic and elemental expression, there still seems to be enough to tell of the “touch of a vanished hand.”
“How interesting,” justly remarks Olga Racster, “it is to observe an expert spelling out the name of an old fiddle by the aid of this ‘touch of a vanished hand.’ How eagerly he seeks it and finds it with the help of that alphabet which lies concealed in the colour, shape, height and curves of an old violin.”
Together with the difficulty of faking instruments the synthesis of connoisseurship in this line could not be better expressed. As for the quality of the tone, the expert relies purely and simply upon his ear, no book or hints of a practical character can assist the expert to perfect his ear. All depends upon natural disposition and the experience of a well-trained organ in this most important part of connoisseurship of musical instruments.
When Rossini was asked what is required to make a good singer, he said: “Three things, voice, voice, voice.” The quotation fits here for the chief requirement of a good connoisseur of musical instruments as regards their musical quality consists of a triply good ear.
CHAPTER XXIV
VELVETS, TAPESTRIES AND BOOKS
Olla Podrida: Genuine and faked antique stuffs—The peculiar knowledge necessary to an expert on stuffs—The difficulty in imitating Renaissance velvet—Collectors of costumes—Collections of dolls—Tapestries—Repairs and faked parts or qualities—Book collecting—Two kinds of book collectors—The faking of editions and rare bindings—The extended and ambitious activity of the art of faking—Faked aerolites!
Assembling in this chapter a variety of objects under the title of minor branches of art collecting, we do not use the term artistically, but merely because these branches apparently attract fewer art lovers than the others, and the activity of the faker is more restricted in their case. In many of these branches, too, the art of collecting and connoisseurship is reduced to technical knowledge and artistic sentiment plays a very secondary part.
If there is any one branch of collecting in which it is necessary to be a specialist to ensure success, that branch is unquestionably antique stuffs. Artistic sentiment and good taste are of comparatively slight assistance compared with technical knowledge, and they may even at times produce two dangerous psychological elements only too often responsible for collectors’ blunders: enthusiasm and suggestion. The technician with knowledge of the different qualities of materials, with an eye for the various peculiarities of the weave and colour, and sound information as to the character of the various patterns, etc., is doubtlessly the best equipped as a connoisseur of stuffs. This may sound absurd to the outsider, especially to artists, whom we have ourselves found to be over-confident as to their qualities, their pictorial eye, their full acquaintance with form. Yet too many of these artists, not being collectors or experts, have bought modern goods as antique, old furniture re-covered with modern brocade that no expert would for a moment have taken as being of the same date as the furniture. We refer, of course, to those modern imitations generally the easiest to detect, however artfully they have been coloured and aged to give them the appearance of genuine antiquity.