Behind the Hedge

 Behind the Hedge

I have an old violin I bought in 1972 and used frequently for playing in pubs and folk clubs. Its distinguishing feature is scratched into the varnish of the back – 2£. But it plays freely. The low clearance at the nut makes stopping easy. Through frequent use I am familiar with the curve of the bridge, and the separation of the strings. It has history**. But last summer it came unglued, and was inexpertly repaired by a wife-husband team who deal mostly with school violins. And now the pegs do not hold the tension of the strings. Caswells Strings is a much bigger concern with a well stocked showroom in town. My niece bought a violin from them 7 years ago and, more recently, I bought a 'mute' there. But I had not seen any sign of a 'craftsman' on their premises.  

I looked online for local violin makers (as I had some years ago in Mexico City – see my blog-post), and found an entry from a firm I had never heard of, in a tiny hamlet I had passed through many times; a mere handful of houses and a letterbox. I telephoned to make an appointment and was given instructions on how to find the "workshop", by turning off the lane 50 yards before the hamlet. 

I could not have been more surprised if I had found behind the hedge, in that little hamlet, a fully equipped and well manned space ship. As the door opened I heard a faint hum from the engines, two men in aprons; it could be about to take off.

One man was bent over the body of a double bass gripped in a large vice and was preparing to fit a new neck to the block. The other I must have caught between jobs, for he had nothing in his hands at the moment I entered. I looked around me, astonished.

It is amusing that the firm advertise themselves as 'Violin Makers', for they clearly specialise in the less romantic double-bass, and more often repair those than construct them from scratch. The founder of the firm had for many years been a professional bass player with a London orchestra till he retired some 30 years ago, to open the workshop. The 'firm' moved up from Henley 25 years ago. 

        There were some twenty basses lining the walls in various states of repair, but also a cello in the process of construction and a solitary violin, ready varnished but as yet unplayed.  

'David' looked at my pegs, applied chalk to all, gently reamed one peg-hole, trimmed a whisker off its peg to make it more circular in section, and drilled a new hole for the string further up the shank. All inside 40 minutes.  

(** If you are interested in the story of how I came by my old 2£ fiddle, drop me a line to: cawstein@gmail.com)