Video 1 - Perspective My workshop is located in Kibbutz Ein Carmel in Israel. The Kibbutz was born as an idealistic socialist collective community. Most of the Kibbutzim are less collective communities these days, and Ein Carmel is no different. Of the things that remain from those early times, are empty and neglected structures that used to be chickencoops. Some years ago, an artist from the kibbutz came up with the idea of letting artists renovate those very simple and stinky buildings and turn them into workshops. Today these chickencoops host a wide range of artisan workshops: jewellery and ceramics makers, a blacksmith, carpenters, furniture restorers, perfume makers, printing press workshop, a glass blowing and a glass casting workshops and of course violin and bow making. When I came back from studying violin making in Cremona, Italy, it wasn’t exactly the place I had in mind, but problems with my landlord on the one hand, and the hospitality of bow maker David Samuels – who already worked there at the time –on the other, made me unpack my violin-making boxes there. The rest is history and here I am.
Video 2 – preparations My part in the "violinbox” project, as it was described to me by Ute (who invited me to take part), was “to unite violin and varnish”. I love to explore different varnishes and varnishing techniques, so it seemed fascinating to me to experience varnishing with somebody else’s varnish. On the other hand, it was exactly that: varnish somebody else’s violin – actually even worse, many somebody else’s violin – with a varnish I didn’t make, not exactly my comfort zone... stressful. Joining the group late and not being part of the whole thinking, I didn’t have a clear understanding of how I can add my own flavour into the rather obvious task of uniting violin and varnish. I couldn’t think of any local materials I could use in this task. Andy’s Idea of making a brush from peacock’s feathers was kind of cool but not very practical, so I skipped the peacock hunt and decided to steal another idea from his red violin project.
Video 3 - Mullers What I particularly love in my place, beside the fact that it is not very accessible to the common musician (as we all know, you can’t really make instruments when they keep opening your door asking for strange things like strings an setups... ), is my artists and artisan friends. Over the years I collaborated with some of them. This brings me back to Andy’s idea, in the red violin project, of involving your community in your work. My community is just perfect for these kind of projects. I could think of at least 3 joint projects and talking with my Ceramist friend I quickly understood that my problem will be to choose one only... Anyway, to cut a long story short, I decided after a short survey in our WhatsApp group showing everyone’s interest in glass blowing (I guess it’s the most far from our own wooden stuff), to ask my Glass blowing friend Shlomit if she is up to making the perfect muller for us. We had to start thinking and making experiments before the violin arrived, as it gets very hot here in summer, which makes glass blowing not a very pleasant task in that season. Shlomit was so excited to start making mullers (she told me she couldn’t think of anything else except for what will the best way be to do it) that before I even got the chance to plan my moves, she was standing at my doorstep holding at least 10 beautiful mullers. We soon discovered that grinding flat the surface of the muller is far more time consuming than making them. I had to grind my pigments into Julia’s varnish with my own muller because we didn’t have one ready on time.
Video 4 - Varnishing That part went quite well. The varnish that Julia cooked from rosin that was collected in the” Robin Hood’s forest ”was very easy to work with and dried very well. It was clear to me that the varnish should be pristine, mainly because I don’t think I am very good at antiquing, I always feel quite stupid putting so much effort in a process time will do much better than me. The second reason was because, when I opened the box and saw the almost finished violin, it was very unique, “funky” (as Julia described it preparing me to the first meeting with it), but in a very positive way. I actually was amazed by how a violin made by many different hands could look so beautiful and coherent in style. I just didn’t want anything of it to get lost. I wanted to make it look like a normal violin but at the same time to maintain this “funkiness”. I thought a straight varnish with no tricks and shticks will do the violin justice. The four different woods that make up the violin were very different in colour and consistency, which I wanted to balance just a bit. The back was very dark and compact, with a nice reddish colour already. The ribs were also quite dark with a greenish hue and the wood seemed very porous. The top was very light in colour compared to all the rest and not very homogeneous, as it had some greenish strips. Finally, the neck was so different from the maple we are used to work with. I loved the texture that was created in the back of the scroll. It was very orange in colour. I used egg-white to seal the wood. I started with the darker woods leaving the top unsealed and left it in the UV cabinet for few more days, hoping to balance the colour difference a bit. The ribs and scroll needed more hands than the rest. I applied one coat of Dammar in thurp, and then one coat of my own clear oil varnish. In this was I created a good transparent layer that will emphasise the different nature of the woods. I then started applying Julia’s varnish, I used two versions: Natural and coloured (I added red rosinate into it), altering between these two to balance the colour on the different woods.
Video 5 - finish I find violins (and their bigger siblings) amazing because they tell a story. New-born violins tell our story as makers – by that I mean the obvious things such as where we were trained etc’ but also our mood, atmosphere and what we went through while making them. Then when they go out into the world, just like kids, they have their own adventures and stories (that’s why to me it is fascinating to look at old instruments). I tell all this because Israel’s Democracy is under a very dangerous attack by our government. We are very concerned and spend much time demonstrating in the streets. The word Democracy in Hebrew is what is printed on the sticker, that I chose to put on the box – hoping the violin will carry the message of democracy and freedom around the world.