From Timber to Timbre: Bonding over strings, bows, beer at violin-making workshop

A motley crew of people sitting around them, bending over woodworking tools and focusing on the delicate, ancient craft of making cellos, violins and bows. Some participants in the Brandenburg workshop had known one another from a traditional and larger workshop in Oberlin, in the US state of Ohio, but there had long been a wish among European craftspeople to meet up somewhere closer to home. 

“Oberlin is a great event, no doubt,” a young female violin-maker from Hanover, Germany, told DW. “That’s all fine, but to have something like this in Europe is just wonderful,” she said. “We get so much inspiration from workshops like these; it’s been great fun and absolutely helpful for our work, with so many details being important in our trade,” another young woman at the same table — half Italian, half German — said. “We talk about the making of our instruments here, and we are working together on joint projects and share our ideas,” a Cuban violin-maker based in Switzerland said. 

Niall Flemming, an Australian-born bow-maker living in Ireland, told DW that he was delighted that the workshop in Brandenburg an der Havel finally became a reality, pointing out that for Europeans it offered many practical advantages. 

“I came here from Brussels on a train with my tools. I don’t have to worry about going through airport security with knives and chisels. Plus it’s more affordable than a trans-Atlantic journey,” Flemming said. The man who made all of this possible is Ian Crawford McWilliams, a Canadian from Saskatchewan. For the past decade or so he has been a proud inhabitant of Brandenburg an der Havel. “I started out as a cabinetmaker from a very young age; it was a passion for doing woodworking,” McWilliams recalled. “I was working in shops in Canada where I would stand at a machine all day long and that really wasn’t what I wanted, so I later came to appreciate the violin-making craft.” 

After stopovers in England and France, he finally settled down in Brandenburg together with his family, where he found “some space for my woodworking job separate from our house.” Now, several years into his new career, the Canadian gets some $16,400 per violin or viola and about $33,000 for a cello. He’s sold his instruments to musicians in Germany, Switzerland, North America and other places. In cooperation with the church and the local authorities, McWilliams managed to stage Brandenburg’s first workshop for fellow European-based craftspeople — an event that he said was not meant to throw the gauntlet to the organizers of the Oberlin workshop in Ohio. “Many people here in Europe can’t make it over there for various reasons. It’s so far away, an expensive journey, and with COVID as well,” McWilliams said. 

“I think the location here in Brandenburg is just amazing. We can use this space in the church, and we have our accommodation together — you don’t want everyone to stay in hotels all around town, but here everyone is together, we live together, cook together and that creates an atmosphere that bonds people together,” he said. The Canadian violin-maker enjoys working on joint projects during the workshop. Talking to his colleagues is an added bonus. 

This article was provided by Deutsche Welle