"Violin Porn"

"Violin porn" is not my coinage.

John Marchese writes about it in his book to describe collectors, dealers, and violinists when they talk over-enthusiastically about curves and f-holes ( _The Violin Maker: Finding a Centuries-Old Tradition in a Brooklyn Workshop_ (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), p. 107).

It works kind of like food porn, I guess. Multi-pixalated shots of gateaux chocolat, close-ups of Strads (Le Messie is in the photo to the right): you get the picture.

Or how about this:

"[The]... capaciousness of the chest, combined with the proportions of thickness of the back and belly, from whence results the sound produced by the vibrations of the air under the action of the bow, which sets the sonorous body in motion."

That was François-Joseph Fétis writing in 1861 on the qualities that distinguish Stradivaris from other instruments. So how come nobody ever called the Gender Studies Police on him?