Every year I offer a work experience placement to a violin making student through the scheme run by the RAB Trust. During one of the coldest and snowiest weeks of the year, Marion Pollart came to the workshop. She is from Belgium, fully trained as a conference interpreter, but having chosen a big career change, she's now in her second year at the Newark School of Violin Making. We had discussed in advance the work she would undertake, and decided that she would focus on making a scroll for … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2018
306: 15 3/4 inch (40cm) viola based on Paolo Maggini, January 2018
This viola is a commission from a player in Suffolk, who has seen and liked a viola of this model that belongs to a colleague. The model is actually based on a Paolo Maggini violin. Maggini worked in Brescia, northern Italy at the end of the 16th and early 17th century, and is known particularly for fine sounding violas. The violin belongs to Ian Belton of the Brodsky Quartet who kindly let me measure and photograph it. The violin is, as are a number of Maggini violins, oversized by modern … [Read more...]
