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Making Matters: Smoke treatment in Stradivari's instruments

2026-03-13T10:07:00

Lead image - smoking tonewood

Did Stradivari apply a smoke treatment to his tonewood before starting an instrument? Joseph Nagyvary argues that he did, and examines how the process could benefit luthiers today

Hearsay attributed to Leopold Mozart suggests that some ancient luthiers put their unfinished violins in the chimney to dry. I always wondered if this story was true. As finding out was on my bucket list, I took the trouble to peruse the original German text of Leopold’s 1756 treatise Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule, where I found this footnote…

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