Where the Past Resonates and the Future Takes Shape

Invisible Collaborators: Repairing with Generations in Mind

Whenever I begin a new project – whether it is a minor repair or the complete restoration of a stringed instrument – I first work through the entire process in my mind, often more than once. Where should I begin? Which steps will make the following ones easier? And what is the best way to reach a particular area without creating unnecessary risks?

There is, however, another consideration that is just as important. As a violin maker, I never make decisions in isolation. In a sense, every instrument comes with a group of invisible collaborators: the person who originally built it, the craftspeople who have repaired it over the years, the restorers who may one day work on it again, and of course both its present and future players. Although none of them is physically present, each of these perspectives shapes the choices I make.

This way of thinking also matters for musicians. We play instruments of remarkable delicacy, many of which have survived for centuries. Even if an instrument happens to be in my possession today, it will one day pass into someone else’s hands. The way I care for it now will influence its future – and the opportunities it offers to generations of players yet to come.
Seen from this perspective, careful maintenance becomes much more than routine upkeep. A fine stringed instrument is, in many ways, a precious trust placed in our hands for a time. We are its temporary custodians, entrusted not only with preserving it, but also with sharing its voice and music with the world.

That is what makes it so extraordinary that, as Rebecca Solnit writes, “a delicate piece of craftsmanship could endure for centuries, that something so small and light could do so much, that an instrument made in the eighteenth century could have so much to say in the twenty-first. It felt like a messenger from the past and an emblem of the possible, both a relic and a promise.”
(Rebecca Solnit, No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain, Haymarket Books, Chicago, 2025)