Liquid Marble is the secret of Italian violinmakers.

Written by Boris Dmitriev
Published: April 19, 2014 at 8:50 AM [UTC]

I am a violinmaker by profession. I’ve been repairing and making new bowed string musical instruments for more than thirty years. It was much time ago when a number of representatives of the family of noble violins made by me exceeded three hundred. They wander around the world, and I hope they satisfy their owners and numberless listeners a lot. My service record allows me to reason, in qualified way, about the state of things in the field of musical culture.

The problem of an Italian violin coat is the greatest secret in the history of instrument designing. Fundamentally, there are not any satisfying theoretical generalizations regarding this secret, and that’s why I cannot refer to competent sources so much. Please take all that I’m going to write about Italian coat as a result of my own observations and conclusions.

Since ancient times, marble has been occupying an exceptionally honorable place in the life of Italians as a key material used in both art and building. They have been trying to get liquid marble since these ancient times. They were willing to learn to coat earthenware and wooden home furniture for a better look and firmness. It was required to be able to firmly and invisibly glue with liquid marble pieces of material that had unfortunately fallen away when building ancient temples.

As it’s known: “Practice makes perfect”. Of course, Italians achieved something. The thing we sometimes scornfully call alchemy indeed was a developed science some time ago, with a full complex knowledge gathered within centuries, though some part of them was irrevocably lost for us. Most things forgotten alchemists virtuously did still fail to repeat, like getting a good violin coat or varnish.

Read more about Liquid Marble
http://boris-dmitriev.com/Monologue-of-a-violin-maker

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