I spent an amazing week in mid-July at the studio of François Perego in Dinan, Brittany, refining my ideas about violin varnishing. François has a background as a painter, art restorer, chemist and researcher, and is the compiler of the major work on painting materials in the French language. He has been running courses for violin makers for years, but was sorry that as they were in French he had no contact with the English-speaking side of the violin making world. I found out about this by … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2019
314: violin based on Antonio Stradivari 1734 ‘Habeneck’
This is a lovely project. It's a commission from close to home, a violinist in Manchester's Hallé Orchestra who lives quite near me. Philippa had seen one of my violins and heard quite a lot about my work before she visited. When we chatted about what she was looking for, I thought that a late Stradivari model would fit the bill, and started to think about which one to use as a model. While I was thinking, I paid a visit to the workshop of the Royal Academy of Music to say hello to … [Read more...]
