‘People Call, We Fix Their Instruments’: An Interview With a Luthier

by Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite

A luthier makes and repairs stringed instruments including violins and guitars. The word is born out of the word lute, which is a stringed instrument with ancient roots. In the 1500s, the lute gained popularity in Europe, and many cities became centers of fine instrument making, particularly in Italy.

Today, the Guild of American Luthiers, founded in 1972, reports a membership of 3,600 luthiers and suppliers. Formal training in lutherie is hard to come by, and often comes with a large price tag, making it hard for many people to start out in the craft. But according to the American Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of instrument repair technicians is projected to rise just over 6% by 2022.

Graeme Rose works for Philip Davis, a luthier in Toronto. I spoke with him about concrete guitars, tiny violins, and the power of the library.

You’ve been working with a luthier for seven years. How did you find yourself in the field of instrument making?

I started in my early twenties. Phil [Davis] was an old friend of my mom’s from when they both attended art school in the 1970s. I had never met him before. I had made an electric guitar on my own, and it jogged my mom’s memory that she knew someone who did this for a living. She thought there might be part-time work for me in the shop, or at least some advice and a sounding board for some of the issues that come up when you make an instrument. Phil was actually looking for someone to replace a part-time employee, and I was still a full-time university student, so I started with two days a week around my class schedule, and when I finished school it turned into three days a week.

Are you in a part-time capacity now?

It’s only part-time because of the balance I’ve struck between lutherie and woodworking. I started working in carpentry in high school with another family friend. It kind of came about naturally, and I started working in an after-school capacity. Gradually, part-time after-school work became summer work, which then turned into more full-time work as I was coming out of university, and now I’m there three days a week as well.

Both of my jobs could be full-time on their own, but it works out well to do both part-time. My employers work on a small scale, so it’s easy for them to come up with three days of good work for me to do, but to move that up to five days would require them to change their business model to expand and accommodate another person. So I feel like I have the security of a full-time job. I don’t feel like I’m scrounging, but I think that’s mostly due to my excellent employers.

How did your education fit into your work, if at all?

I came through a fairly academically focused high school. We had no shop classes or woodworking there, and I graduated with good marks and went to university without any clear concept of what I was going to do. I took a broad spectrum of classes in my first year, and my initial thought was to study English and Biology, but eventually moved into Chemistry and Biology because I wasn’t really interested in studying English the way it was being taught. As school went on, I became less and less thrilled with the whole reality of being there. There was a period in school where I wouldn’t go to class, and would spend all day in the libraries making scale drawings of guitars I wanted to build. I was feeling really stimulated by that work. It became clear to me that I wouldn’t be working in a lab my whole life, and I didn’t really want to teach science. So in the end, I left school.

Looking back, would it have made a difference if someone had put that idea into your head earlier, that you could be trained in this work? Would you have maybe done something differently?

If I were to do a formal study of a craft, I would be more inclined to do one in instrument making. Unless you go to Europe, though, there are very few opportunities to get a formal education in instrument making. Both schools that I know of are kind of Ivy League level, and have $40,000 tuition, which is pretty hard to swing for me. I’d probably be more drawn to instrument making because for me, there’s more history in instrument making, and more depth of experimentation and personal self-expression. I’m also a musician, and instruments are more than just art; they’re tools for making music. I find it really compelling to lavish great attention to detail on an object that is, in and of itself, not the end goal. Music is the end goal. If you make a chest of drawers, taking your socks in and out of it is less exciting to me.

What’s your focus at the shop?

We focus on violins, but also all the “fine stringed” instruments: cellos, violas, and double basses. We generally stay away from fretted instruments like electric guitars because there are so many other great places in the city that do that. It’s hard for us to offer something competitive outside of the fine stringed instruments. There’s similar theory behind all the repairs that someone would do on any instruments, but it’s better to specialize.

How do people find out about your shop? Who is your clientele?

We work out of the basement of Phil’s house, so there’s no storefront. It’s principally through word of mouth that people find us. When Phil was an art student, he started making instruments, but he didn’t have an opportunity to work on them in Toronto at first. He went to school in England, Quebec City, and Germany — all over the place. In the late 1960s and early 1970s in Toronto, and more widely, there was a real grassroots interest in folk songs and those traditions, which come out of instruments that predate the modern violin. He was interested in that too, and so this group of people of a similar age and of similar interests kind of carved out a community together, and now forty years later, there’s a base of clientele. Now, it ranges from young people who want to buy their first violin, to professional players who have violins worth $60,000. Musicians also tend to teach music, and they recommend shops to get violin bows rehaired, or to get new strings. People call and make appointments, and then we fix their instruments.

How is instrument making different from carpentry work?

Every task presents its own challenge. Wood is tissue from a living thing, after all, and it needs a lot of attention. You need to be able to look at a piece of wood and see how it might bend, or twist, or crack. I learned all of that working in carpentry. The biggest adjustment I had to make when learning the craft of lutherie was how small the scale was. On my first day, I tried to cut and fit a bridge to a violin. The way that works is that you tend to buy a blank, which is an oversized piece of maple that looks like a violin bridge. Then, with a knife, you whittle the feet of the bridge so that they very precisely fit the curve of the violin without any gaps. The bridge also has to lean back at a certain angle for the strings to pass over. Each foot of the bridge is about a ¼” long by 3/16″ wide. I worked on it for a couple of hours, and thought I really did it well, but obviously there were so many gaps and I was still so off. You really have to totally change your thinking. With cabinetry, if something fits pretty well, you can close a gap, but that doesn’t work with instrument making. All those gaps can cause rattling or buzzing noises. It was a real eye opener to find out how precise you have to be.

Has your instrument making work inspired your other interests?

More than anything else, I pay much more attention to how things are made and how they’re put together. Having done work repairing and maintaining instruments, I’m much less afraid to take things apart. I’ve also developed, for better or for worse, a confidence about putting something back together without doing too much damage. Having handled these valuable objects, I’ve got a good sense of how careful I need to be. Of course, there are things I might ruin, but I’d probably know if I was going to do that and might not try to open it up.

Do you have plans to open your own studio, or strike out on your own?

Those questions are definitely coming up. There is certainly opportunity to establish myself in either woodworking or lutherie. I work for two fabulous employers, but they’re both in their mid-sixties. It’s inevitable that they won’t be working at the same level forever, and more would fall to me in terms of being more independent in finding work, even if its under the same business name. It works out great to have the two jobs when I’m not responsible for finding and organizing work for both of them. I probably couldn’t run two different businesses at the same time for three days a week.

There’s a big difference between doing a craft and owning a business.

For lutherie, there is a retail aspect to the stock, like violins for sale and for rent. It’s totally possible that the time would come that I could buy the business. That would be a huge step, to go from an hourly wage to covering costs and managing inventory, and getting a business loan to buy all of these expensive violins to then resell. It would be a huge life change and I’m happy to not be faced with it just yet.

What path would you recommend to someone just starting out in lutherie?

It is really tough. There are some courses that you can take, but they’re usually short in terms of time commitment. For a beginner, you really can’t make a violin in 30 hours of coursework. I made my first guitar using library books, which was a good place to start. The books are great, but there’s no substitute for someone to suggest things, or help you fix a problem. It’s good to jump in with both feet, and not be too precious about trying. Even if you’re a prodigy, your first violin or guitar is not going to be your best. And why would you want it to be? It’s better to go through the process knowing that the next thing you do is going to be that much better.

Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite writes and edits in Toronto.

Photo: Fabien Lemetayer

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