J. Edwin Bonn

He was educated at the Ledbury Grammar School, and was intended for the medical profession, but he abandoned medicine and practised for some time as analytical and consulting chemist. Latterly he entered the violin trade, and is now established at Brading as dealer and maker. He works on the Stradivari model, and also on an original one. He has made personally forty-nine violins, and about a hundred have been made by his workmen. The workmanship is good, and the tone clear and powerful. The wood is excellent, especially the pine of the front table. The grain, as a rule, is close, straight, and well-defined. The varnish is Mr. Bonn's own composition. In 1897 he discovered a new and more simple method of dissolving amber, which gives great elasticity and a good range of colours. The method gives absolutely fast colours, and the varnish does not chip. Mr. Bonn does not care to divulge his secrets, but he states that he does not use in the process drying oil prepared with lead salts. Lead, he maintains, injures the colours. The varnish dries well within the compass of a season, and when dry it does not soften under the heat of the hand. It is, moreover, perfectly elastic and tough. The colours are yellow, red, golden orange, orange red, and orange brown. Mr. Bonn varnishes all his instruments in orange brown, unless any other colour is specified. The prices of his violins are: class A, ten guineas ; class B, twelve guineas; and class C, £16. Mr. Bonn has several chemical preparations for violin strings, pegs, for cleaning the violin, &c. He is the discoverer also of a chemical method of preparing strings, and it is due to him to say that his strings are very fine. Another invention of his is the four-footed bridge. He makes bows, which are of the regulation length, of full and medium weight respectively, and perfect as to balance and elasticity. The thicknesses were mathematically regulated throughout, the cambre following the line of Dodd. These, with silver mounts, are priced at two guineas each. Facsimile label : — J EDWIN BONN BRADING, ISLE OF WIGHT. 1898