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Look Inside The Manual of Musical Instrument Conservation

The Manual of Musical Instrument Conservation

$169.00 (R)

Author: Stewart Pollens

Date Published: August 2015
availability: Available
format: Hardback
isbn: 9781107077805

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$ 169.00 (R)
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About the Authors

This is the first book to combine museum-based conservation techniques with practical instructions on the maintenance, repair, adjustment, and tuning of virtually every type of historical musical instrument. As one of the world's leading conservators of musical instruments, Stewart Pollens gives practical advice on the handling, storage, display and use of historic musical instruments in museums and other settings, and provides technical information on such wide-ranging subjects as acoustics, cleaning, climate control, corrosion, disinfestation, conservation ethics, historic stringing practice, measurement and historic metrology, retouching, tuning historic temperaments, varnish and writing reports. There are informative essays on the conservation of each of the major musical instrument groups, the treatment of paper, textiles, wood and metal, as well as historic techniques of wood and metalworking as they apply to musical instrument making and repair. This is a practical guide that includes equations, formulas, tables and step-by-step instructions.
- Arranged alphabetically for quick retrieval of information
- Presents treatments, materials, and formulas recommended by leading conservators working in major museums
- Describes the procedures used in restoring and maintaining woodwind, brass, stringed instruments, keyboard, percussion, and ethnographic instruments
- Provides practical advice on handling, storage, and use of musical instruments
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Reviews & endorsements
"As usual with Pollens's writings, this [book] is impeccably researched and thorough … [It] provides a reliable guide to various materials and techniques, from moulding to soldering and dealing with chemical treatments and solvents. It has the potential to improve and develop all techniques, and help us to understand and handle materials and methods with greater confidence. Few of us will ever have to tackle the problem of bronze disease on a bugle, but it's nice to know I now have access to that information, not far away from the immediately helpful entry on 'cleaning: soaps and detergents' … I am very happy and grateful to be able to add [this book] to my reference shelf …"
John Dilworth, The Strad
'The Manual of Musical Instrument Conservation is a clearly written and practical guide to a complex subject, with an abundance of useful photos illustrating the techniques described. Anyone involved in preserving a historic musical instrument will undoubtedly want to keep this book in a handy location on their bookshelf, in the same way Pollens must have done for his 'shop notebook' during his tenure at the Metropolitan Museum.' Robert Adelson, Notes
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Product details
- Date Published: August 2015
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781107077805
- length: 456 pages
- dimensions: 255 x 197 x 27 mm
- weight: 1.16kg
- contains: 62 b/w illus. 12 tables
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Introduction
Entries A-Z: Acoustics
Benzotriazole
Bleach
Boxwood
Brass, bronze, and nickel silver alloys
Brass and nickel silver cleaning
Brass instrument conservation
Bronze disease
Calendar
Cents conversion
Chemical analysis
Cleaning: soaps and detergents
Clavichord maintenance
Compo or pastiglia
Conservation reports
Dendrochronology
Dictionary of common and obsolete chemical terms
Disinfestation
Drill bits
Ebony and ebonizing
Electroplating and electro-cleaning
Epoxy removal
Ethics
Flutes
Fortepiano maintenance
French polishing
Frets, tied and fixed
Gilding
Glues, pastes, and other adhesives
Grain painting and marbling
Grit size comparison chart
Guitar stringing
Gut strings
Handling, storage, and transporting musical instruments
Harp maintenance and stringing
Harpsichord maintenance
Helmholtz resonator
Historical metrology
Humidity control
Hurdy gurdy stringing
Illumination level
Inscriptions, faded
Intervals
Iron and steel
Ivory
Japanning
Keyboard instrument conservation
Labels
Lacquer
Lakes
Lead and lead alloys
Leather
Lute stringing
Measurement
Measurement system conversion
Mersenne's Law
Metallurgy
Metalworking
Mold making
Mother-of-pearl and abalone
Nickel silver cleaning
Oddy test
Organ restoration
Overspun strings
Paper, pencil, and ink
Parchment, vellum, and slunk
Patination
Pegs
Piano action regulation (modern grand)
Pitch
Proportion
Recording
Relative humidity
Retouching
Rosin
Safety equipment
Scaling
Sealing wax
Sharpening tools
Silver cleaning
Soldering
Solvents and solvent cleaning
Specific gravity
Staining wood
Stain removal
Stradivari's varnish
Stringed keyboard restoration
Tap drill sizes
Tapers
Temperature
Tempering steel
Textile cleaning
Tinning
Tortoiseshell, horn, and whalebone
Tuning and temperament
Vapor-phase inhibitor paper
Varnish
Viola da Gamba strings
Violin adjustment
Violin, baroque fittings and strings
Violin sizes
Violin and viola strings, modern
Vulcanite and ebonite
Wax cleaning emulsion
Wire gauge systems for early keyboard instruments
Wheat paste
Wood
Woodwind instrument conservation
Woodworking.
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Author
Stewart Pollens
Stewart Pollens served between 1976 and 2006 as the conservator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he restored and maintained a collection of over five thousand instruments. He is the author of over eighty scholarly articles and four books, including Forgotten Instruments (1980), The Violin Forms of Antonio Stradivari (1992), The Early Pianoforte (1995; reprinted 2009), Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù (1998), François-Xavier Tourte: Bow Maker (2001), and Stradivari (2010), which won a 2011 Choice award for 'Outstanding Academic Title'. In 1997 he was the recipient of the American Musical Instrument Society's Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize for The Early Pianoforte, a study of the invention and early history of the pianoforte. He is also a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and writes frequently for The Strad.