One cannot just say “hey, this is a piece of wood, now pay £15,500”.
You must come up with a sensible narrative, an intricate mystique surrounding those ‘pieces of wood’, a magickal quality adhering to it. And then you charge yours £15.5k.
Step 1
First of all, your violin lutherie shop should have anything to do with Cremona. Either within the city boundaries, or harvesting wood out of a forest near the city, or an old relative that was a violin maker in the time of Stradivari or Guadagnini. Use your wildest imagination ideas here to create this narrative. Add some old photos no one can attest its validity.
Step 2
Next stage is that you need to produce a full ‘violin diary’ of the build, showcasing all particular characteristics, weights, types of wood, design decisions, used templates, and the like.
Step 3
Discuss about the master template used in the build. Here you must pay homage to the old masters but change bits and pieces here and there to attest to the freshness and modern approach you undertook. Throw without fear of reprimand names like Stradivari, Guarneri, Steiner, or Vuillaume. State that you ‘gave a new interpretation’ of the model, a ‘deconstruct’ that improved the tonal response, things like that.
Step 4
By now you should full engage in your narrative by stating that your soundbar is different from the others, as you employed a particular technique outlined by some ancestor violin maker (or liutaio). That its shape, form, length, and concave attitude reverberates over the soundbox to produce remarkable musical responses. Mention that you made your own purfling.
Step 5
Remember not to reveal too much about the varnish, that’s something to keep “within the family’s secrets” and only that accounts for a lot of money in the market. You must hide this even though everybody knows what you did or it’s thoroughly documented on the internets.
On the topic of varnishing, if you can, create a story that you’ve found some old piece of paper from your great-grand-father outlining a recipe for the perfect varnish that you used in the third coating to “add to the freshness of the tone”.
Step 6
The icing to the cake is adding a full dendrochronological report by some expert named Lauro Gravatini (I’m deeply sorry in advance if this name already exists) or Tiberius Thompson III where he outlines the provenance of the wood employed in the build, the historical context and the weather it faced throughout the years. Of course, this shall be a positive account of all this happenstance.
Step 7
Next, go wild on your label. Use Latin words like “faciebat cremonæ anno MCMLXXXV” (you must use Roman numbers – that’s year 1985) or “secundum exemplar a Nicolao Amato fabrefactum” that also reads out quite nice.
Your violin should be born with at least 10 years of age. It’s never fresh, recently out of the woodshop. Never. It has been curing and played only by the most capable hands.
Or go ‘full italian’, ie, “Fatto in Cremona Anno 2012 No. 43” that has a nice ring to it. Prefer old-ish papers (the more yellow and faded the best).
Step 8
Name your violin. Use a cool name perhaps a contraption of some words in Italian like “Perseveratto” or a female sounding name like “Florisbella” or hinting notions like “Peccatella” (for peccato, or sin, in Italian) – abuse on letter repetitions but not too much, as you want to still look and sound Italian.
It should be unique and remarkable. It’s supposed to convey good ideas and notions.
Step 9
You are ready for the next step. Invent some story about the violin being played by some obscure character that “played with his heart, soul, and tears” throughout the years. Or perhaps that it was left unplayed for 25 years until it was found in an old attic. The more details you add to the narrative, the better.
Step 10
Find a very good (hopefully unused as of yet) meaningful (?) adjective for this violin’s tone. Like “fresh and shy of sound ripeness” or “pleasant to auricular entrances”. It must be very abstract and hard to put into words. “vestigial tone hinting of acuteness”, or “tone generating a peculiar ‘protensive quality’ that were mellowed as time traversed”, or even “soundly vibrating yet elastic”, things like that. Think about how people describe wine and palate responses and go from there for inspiration.
Step 11
Take a photo with the violin on either an old bench or with you looking at the horizon, brooding about ‘things that will be’, pensive mode, troubled by “where and how civilisation is going forward” kind of look. Try to look hopeful yet redeeming.
Another idea is contrast: go to the ocean, find a piece of old log, throw some algae and shells and take your photo in a troubled day. If possible use a counterfeit violin with the same varnish as you don’t want to destroy your masterpiece in the elements.
Step 12
Now it comes to best part for a violin maker: the money part. The need for paying for basic necessities, bills, and the next project. Charge and charge like you mean it. People won’t stop to hear you if you charge low. When you think of a figure, add another 10% on top of it. Go big or go home.
Pronto.
Epilogue
- Build a violin.
- Work on a few creative details.
- Profit!