An authority tells us that: “After 1690 his individuality began to assert itself, his model became more graceful and flatter, the _f_-holes elegant and reclining, the centre bouts gracefully drawn out, as also the corners; the scroll is bold and striking; the purfling rather narrow; and the varnish beautiful golden, or light red. It was at the end of this period that he made the violins known as the ‘Long Strads,’ so called from their narrowness between the _f_-holes, giving them a lanky appearance, the size varying, and the varnish amber, or light red. The year 1700 brings us to his best period, the model flattish, the wood cut on the quarter and thickest in the centre under the bridge, the curves gentle and harmonious, the wood of the blocks very light, often formed of willow, the scroll perfect in its symmetry. The graceful _f_-holes, the transcendently glorious amber-colored, or ruby, varnish are all characteristics of this epoch of the greatest master’s greatest power. His last instruments have the purfling pointed across the corner instead of following it round; and it is not uncommon to find it running completely through the corner. His ticket runs ‘Antonio Stradivarius Cremonensis faciebat Anno 17—’. His years of experiment resulted in a neatly compacted instrument with light edges, accurate corners, round arching, broadly treated but exquisitely graceful sound-holes and scroll and a varnish soft in texture which shades deliciously from orange to red. From 1703 until about 1709, the year of those famous violins, the ‘Pucelle’ and the ‘Viotti,’ Stradivari seems to have settled upon certain points of construction from which he rarely afterwards departed. In 1711 he made the fine violin known as the ‘Parke;’ in 1713, the ‘Boissier,’ which belonged to Sarasate; in 1714, the ‘Dolphin;’ and in 1715, the ‘Gillot’ and the ‘Alard,’ which experts look upon as the master’s finest creations; and in 1716, came the ‘Messiah.’ No detail of his work was too unimportant for the master’s vigilant observation. That he personally designed the pegs, finger-boards, tail-pieces, inlaid patterns, bridges and even the minutest details of his violin cases, is attested by the numerous drawings of these in the Della Valle collection while the several sketches for bow tips and nuts reveal the interesting fact that he also made bows. Generally speaking, the so-called Lost Cremona Varnish was in the writer’s opinion no secret in Stradivari’s lifetime, but the common property of the lute-makers of the day, who compounded it from the materials used by the great painters of the epoch. Stradivari’s own recipe was inscribed on the fly-leaf of a family Bible, but his descendant, Giacomo Stradivari, destroyed this.”[6] Two sons carried on their father’s work, but they produced nothing remarkable.