Jean Baptiste Vuillaume was born in 1798 at Mirecourt, where his father and grandfather before him had followed the calling of violin makers, and where he served his apprenticeship to the craft. At nineteen years of age he made his way to Paris, where he obtained an engagement as workman with the elder Chanot (Francis), with whom he remained until 1821, when he entered the service of an organ builder named Lété, who also dealt in violins, and with whom he was taken into partnership in 1825. In 1828, happily married, and fortified with considerable experience, grafted on a strong natural intelligence, he launched himself on a career which made his name famous in the annals of violin making. Sprung from an industrious and thrifty working class, he had lost no opportunity of perfecting his knowledge of the instrument to which he devoted his talents and the application of his whole life. Of all the great Italian masters of violin-making Stradivari was always his ideal, and by constant study, and cultivation of his own rare natural powers of observation, he acquired such an intimate knowledge and judgment of Stradivari’s work in every detail, that he might almost be said to be better acquainted with that maker’s instruments than the master himself. Vuillaume soon found the sale of violins, issued as new works, without any semblance of antiquity, an unprofitable undertaking, and, recognizing the growing demand in all parts of the world for instruments resembling the great works of Cremona, he determined to apply his great skill as a workman, and his extraordinary familiarity with Stradivari’s models, to the construction of faithful copies of that great maker’s works. This was the foundation of his success, for the modern copies found a ready sale, and orders poured in upon Vuillaume from all parts of the world. These instruments, imitations though they were, had high intrinsic merit; and it is to be remembered that they were copies made from unrivalled models, with a fidelity and care such as only a devoted worshipper and a great master of his art could attain. He spared no pains in striving after perfection in the quality of his materials, and he treated the obscure and difficult problem of varnish (the secret of which, as applied by the old Italian masters, seems to have died with them) with a success which has probably not been equalled by any other maker since their time. The number of these instruments bearing his name is enormous, upwards of two thousand five hundred being known to exist; and many of them he made throughout with his own hand. They were almost always numbered inside, in the middle of the back, in pencil, and we have it on the best authority that every instrument was varnished by his own hand. In a letter written by Vuillaume in 1875, a few weeks before his death, to the well-known Parisian violin maker, M. Silvestre, then living in Lyons, he says: “I have completed three