Helen's Blog

I keep in close contact with the college where I studied, Newark School of Violin Making, and in my role as chair of the RAB Trust www.rabtrust.org I host students for work experience and do whatever I can to keep in touch and help. I was delighted to hear last year about a fantastic inititative by one of the students, Marios Pavlou. He comes from Cyprus and has seen at first hand the suffering of the Syrian refugees who land on his home island. Instead of saying that this is the … [Read more...]

For the first time since I was a student myself, I attended the annual Diploma Day at the Newark School of Violin Making. I'm the chair of the RAB Trust which supports student violin makers, and in that role I have come to know many of the students that have benefited from awards from us, and several of them have come to me for a period of work experience. It was lovely to see the workshops spick and span with all the student work to look at, and to chat to the students who are about to leave … [Read more...]

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...]

I grew up in Hampstead, North London, in a flat above my father's motor repair business. An elderly couple, Mr and Mrs Baker lived next door. Ernie Baker was born in 1902, and had been a cabinet maker. In his youth has worked as a violin maker, but apparently there had been no future in that. Some of his tools were in the communal garden shed and I have used one of his gouges on every one of the scrolls I've made. He died in 1980. Ernie came with my parents to one of the open days at … [Read more...]

I have a lovely workshop which we had built in the garden in 2006/7. The site is tricky; the clue is in the name of our local area, Brooklands, and probably the house was built where there was once a pond when the area was fields. To comply with planning regulations with regard to the overall height, the workshop had to have the floor level about a metre below ground level, and it's built on a piled concrete raft for stability. However, it was a challenge to seal it against water ingress when … [Read more...]

I've had an interesting time varnishing this violin, and matching up the new wood and the old. First the violin had some time tanning in the ultra-violet cupboard, which brought the ribs up closer to the old wood. Then the whole instrument had a coat of coloured primer which again helped even the tones. For the varnish, I used an oil varnish with lake pigments that I made myself, a lovely warm caramel brown colour. I put one less coat on the dark cedar front and the very dark scroll, and it has … [Read more...]

The Newark School of Violin Making has trained many of the best violin makers worldwide over the last 50 years. It was founded by Maurice Bouette, who had himself learnt violin making at evening classes in London run by William Luff; in time he took over the teaching of these classes himself. When the idea of setting up a violin making school at Newark was mooted, Maurice spent some sleepless nights wondering if he should apply to run it. He decided to take the plunge, and the rest is … [Read more...]

Over the last months I've been involved in a time-consuming but satisfying project. One of my longstanding friends gave me some instruments from the workshop of her late father-in-law, Maurice Bouette. In 1972 Maurice helped set up the Newark School of Violin Making and was its first director; he taught me when I was a student there from 1977-80. I was given two violins and two violas. The project is to return them to playing condition and then to sell them to raise money to fund projects … [Read more...]

The news at present is grim and we all wonder what we can do to help. Viola players, this is your chance! You can upgrade your instrument and contribute to  humanitarian relief in Ukraine. 100% of the price of the first of these violas to sell will go towards this vital cause. The proceeds of the second will fund projects that support the training and development of violin making students. These two violas were made by father and son, Maurice and Martin Bouette. Maurice was the founder of the … [Read more...]

In 1999, one of the then tutors at the Newark School of Violin Making had the great idea of setting up an annual one-day conference, open to professionals and students alike. Rob ran this single-handed for 21 years, with speakers from the UK, Europe and North America, until Covid shut it down in 2020. Post-Covid Rob felt it was time to hand on to a new team, so I stepped in with my friends Tim Southon and Nicole Terry. The original venue wasn't available but we were lucky to be able to move … [Read more...]