My main research is done!
It’s time to head back into the workshop and put the results to work
making instruments.
I started asking ‘can you make and design violins today
using entirely methods from Old Cremona?’ and ‘how would you?’ back around 2009. I started by exploring what others had
already figured out. I found that many
people – particularly Sacconi, Hargrave, Denis, and Coates – had already paved
the way, clarifying many points. But
still there were large gaps in the knowledge you would need to build this way.
My questions pulled me into independent research about eight years ago. My
explorations kept expanding, taking more and more of my time. In the last three years, I laid aside making to
focus my efforts on the research. I
decided not to make again until my research results essentially gave a complete
picture of classical making design methods in every instrument feature.
Now that I’m closing out the research and heading on into
making, some sort of recap to summarize and update seems appropriate for this
blog.