Finely Strung

Here’s photograph of a viola that I’ve recently completed. It’s based on the famous ‘Conte Vitale’ by Andrea Guarneri.

My friend Andrew Bellis, who is both a bow maker and viola player, tried it out recently.

Here he plays the two bourées from Bach’s third cello suite.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I often keep a photographic record of instruments while I’m building them. However, the making of this viola was rather special because it was documented in a series of drawings and paintings by the Winchester artist Gill Robinson. I’ve shown a few of her drawings below. If you’d like to see the whole series, there’s a video here.