Report from the Oberlin Violin-Making Workshop
The key ingredient in building great violins is more than wood and glue
"DOES ANYBODY HAVE A...?" The question rings out a dozen times as the violin makers' workshop on the campus of Oberlin College, in Ohio, gets underway and people begin to realize which tools they forgot to pack. Inevitably, somewhere among the dozens of portable workbenches filling the cavernous sculpture studio that hosts this annual gathering, a hand will fly up offering the requested tool. Loaner and borrower are probably competitors the other 50 weeks of the year. But for two weeks each summer, about 40 professional violin makers from a dozen countries come to this small Midwestern community to do what would have seemed unthinkable to their predecessors: to live, work, and study great violins—and play together—while openly sharing information, techniques, and sometimes even tools.
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