The violin I’m showing you today has been crafted on Giuseppe Guarneri’s model from 1734. Guarneri have been one of the most famous luthier families of that time, together with Stradivari and Amati. Many famous violinists have played their violins: one of them is the famous Niccolò Paganini. Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri (1698 – 1744), also called “Giuseppe del Gesù” because of his signature IHS on his violins, was the son of Giuseppe Battista and his instruments are well known for their round and strong sonority.
Crafting a Montagnana cello has been such a fulfilling experience. As I already explained in the last posts, the cello was crafted following the model by Domenico Montagnana, a famous luthier that was born in 1686 in Lendinara and was active in Venice, in M.Matteo Sellas’ workshop. He then started his own workshop around 1721. Although 300 years have passed, the model on which I built the cello has maintained its qualities: good proportions and a good sound response are still what characterises it.
The card scraper is an essential tool for a luthier and it has to be always well sharped. For this step, having to carve the scroll of the violin, I shaped the card scraper very carefully to enter the scroll cavity and began working on it with great care.
A good wood for soundboard crafting for excellent lutherie instruments should have close and uniform growth rings, a good workability and a solid strength-to-weight ratio. Just a small percentage of the trees is selected for soundboard crafting: once the best tree trunks have been chosen (the specimen in the photo is 200 years old), they are manually split into quarters. In that way, checking the quality of the woodgrain and avoiding certain flaws becomes easier.
Willow is one of the most used woods when it comes to lutherie. In the past it was mainly used for crafting blocks and linings, thanks to its firmness and workability. This tree grows in humid areas and in fact we often find it along watercourses, where it propagates easily both by seed and by cutting. It reaches a height of 20-30 metres. It has a scaly bark, while the wood is tender and reddish-yellow: black willow (Salix nigra) is more suitable than white willow (Salix alba) because of its compactness.
