This instrument is part of our 7th annual Contemporary American Makers Exhibition, 2024

A native of Oxfordshire, England, I worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Research Labs in California before deciding to follow my passion for building stringed instruments. Returning to the UK, I studied at the Welsh School of Violin Making and Repair, near Cardiff. After graduating I joined the restoration workshops of Bein and Fushi in Chicago to apprentice under the guidance of master cello restorer, Russell Wagner. In 1996  I opened my own workshop in Santa Rosa, California, providing restoration services to the violin trade.  Since 2015 all of my work  has been devoted to building new instrument

I’ve been awarded two Silver Medals and a certificate for cello tone and, with Chris Peterson, a certificate for Violin Tone  from the Violin Society of America

Lately I’ve been pursuing more community and collaborative projects. “The Redwood Violin” was a community built instrument, made entirely from locally sourced, raw materials. In the ongoing  “Violinabox” project, ten violinmakers around the world take turns to add the next part to a violin, using non-traditional materials found at their own locales

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