I’ve been working for years with Peter Sheppard-Skaerved at the Royal Academy of Music on numerous projects about understanding and interpreting the history of the violin. As part of Knowledge Exchage, a Research England funded project, I was invited to film something about the craft of violin making. I thought I could either do it […]
Barak Norman (1651-1724) is one of the most distinctive and interesting makers of the violoncello, and this...
This was intended as an article for the 100th Issue of the British Violin Making Association’s...
Some years ago I was involved in a project with the British Museum to contextualise their most significant...
A group of cellos and a viol provide clues that point tantalisingly towards being made for Scottish...
Times are hard for us musicians and people in the musical trades. No one’s buying violins when two...
Every year we have dozens of people getting in touch to tell us they think they’ve found a...
As London’s population grew in the early eighteenth century, areas of Westminster between the Royal Palaces...
Every few years viol players in England return with the same question, asking what the viol is in the...
The Voller Brothers are famous as forgers and copyists, but their work takes many forms including some...
How did sixteenth century English viol makers negotiate the reasonably complex task of negotiating...
During my fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005-2006, I pursued a project to understand the...
London Bridge has had a traditional place in English violin lore, however the principle legend that Edward...
Edward Pamphillon is one of the most prolific makers of 17th century England, but his instruments fall...
Some instruments keep recurring in Violins and Violinists and my favourite small viola is one of them...
A small violoncello with a back length of just 632mm was made in London by Barak Norman and his assistant...
Sir John Hawkins immortalised the daughters of Barak Norman, one of England’s leading instrument...
On 27 January 2018, the Royal Orchestral Society celebrate the 170th anniversary of the London premiere of...
The Panormo family are amongst the most celebrated violin makers to ever have worked in London. Vincenzo...
For lucky owners of Barak Norman’s violas there is the tantalising possibility that theirs was the...
Paul Alday’s reputation as one of the most influential violinists of the late Eighteenth-century is all but...
The years surrounding the English Civil War, Interregnum and the Restoration of King Charles II are crucial...
Towards the end of the nineteenth-century the 1690 Tuscan Stradivari made for Cosimo III de Medici was the...
The world’s most famous detective was probably fiction’s most famous violinist, but a further...
