At last summer's violin makers' workshop in Oberlin, an idea was cooked up for a different kind of group project. Australian luthier Hugh Withycombe, using Kevin Kelly's "Four-Circle-Method", came up with a violin outline (minus the corners). A number of molds was produced, with the object of workshop participants taking them home and, through the course of the year, building a violin on the mold.
Since the shape was Amati-inspired, and most of the Cremonese makers were in some way influenced by one or another member of the Amati family, there are a number of directions a maker could take the project. I decided to go Andrea Guarneri with it -- the outline in the upper and lower bouts closely resembled an Andrea Guarneri violin I studied some years ago, with only the CC bouts diverging somewhat.
This coming week is Spring Break at the Red Wing college, so my plan is to start making the violin tomorrow, and see how far I can get. I had planned to keep the week completely free of all other distractions, but they have already been creeping up on me -- first and foremost that broken cello of mine. Still, I should be able to get in a good eight hours of work every day, and more on some days. I had also planned to get some of the prep work out of the way, but life got in the way of that, too. Oh well.
Since the shape was Amati-inspired, and most of the Cremonese makers were in some way influenced by one or another member of the Amati family, there are a number of directions a maker could take the project. I decided to go Andrea Guarneri with it -- the outline in the upper and lower bouts closely resembled an Andrea Guarneri violin I studied some years ago, with only the CC bouts diverging somewhat.
This coming week is Spring Break at the Red Wing college, so my plan is to start making the violin tomorrow, and see how far I can get. I had planned to keep the week completely free of all other distractions, but they have already been creeping up on me -- first and foremost that broken cello of mine. Still, I should be able to get in a good eight hours of work every day, and more on some days. I had also planned to get some of the prep work out of the way, but life got in the way of that, too. Oh well.
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