Viola da Gamba The Dipper workshop undertakes some of the most difficult and time-consuming restoration offered in the world today. Past restorations have included work that is now in the world’s major musical instrument museums and instruments that are being played by the world’s best professional musicians. Occasionally copies are made of instruments or bows [...]

Hare Violin Restoration This violin was made by Edward Pamphilon in collaboration with John Hare whose label it bears. John Hare’s shop was in Mason’s Yard near the Royal Exchange, London. These makers were active during the reign of Charles II, 1660-1685 and this violin is typical of the revival of violin making in England [...]

Early 18th Century Italian Violin Concerto Bow Reproduction Museum collections offer a good resource for accurate reconstruction of historic bows. This violin bow, which is part of the collections of the National Music Museum (NMM) in Vermillion S.D., was copied for a client in 2008. The museum bow did not have its original clip-in frog [...]

I started building the instrument in 2001, but because of the restoration demands of the workshop it was not finished until 2008. The wood for the instrument came from three sources. For the belly I chose a very old piece of Baltic spruce that came from England. It was once part of a cupboard shelf […]

The first question I had to ask concerning these paper patterns was regarding their authenticity. Were they actual material from the Stradivari shop, or were they additions to the collection from later makers such as Bergonzi, Guadagnini or Ceruti?

                        In 1976 as part of my work translating Simone Sacconi’s book, The “Secrets” of Stradivari into English I was asked to review the holdings of the Ala Ponzone collection of Stradivarian material in Cremona. This collection consists of the residue of forms and […]