Autumn 2019
From right to left: Victor Ortiz, Emily Cruse, Florence Ford and myself in 2006.
Good news!
While a student at the Newark School of Violin Making in 2006, I was part of a team of four students, in the annual Fiddle Race, where teams compete to make the best violin in three days.
This year we received some very good news:
Our team violin is sold, and we were able to donate the proceeds to charity Luthiers sans Frontières, who will use the donation to provide training and expertise in the repair and maintenance of instruments of the violin family in countries where there is political or economic difficulty.
While a student at the Newark School of Violin Making in 2006, I was part of a team of four students, in the annual Fiddle Race, where teams compete to make the best violin in three days.
This year we received some very good news:
Our team violin is sold, and we were able to donate the proceeds to charity Luthiers sans Frontières, who will use the donation to provide training and expertise in the repair and maintenance of instruments of the violin family in countries where there is political or economic difficulty.
LsF were very happy. They said: 'This is indeed wonderful news! This sort of figure will just about pay for a two week mission for two people.
Thanks very much!'
This year LsF have organised projects in Haiti and Antigua and Barbados, and they are planning a project in Malawi for February 2020.
You can read about LsF UK's projects here: http://lsf-uk.org/gallery.html
Naturally, the violins are not actually completely finished in three days, and afterwards require still a lot of work. The team that made this violin was led by then final year student Victor Ortiz from Ecuador, and the other team members were Florence Ford, Emily Cruse and myself. After the race we all did some work on it, and decided the proceeds were to go to the charity LsF when it would be sold. But it still wasn't finished three years later when we had all left Newark and spread over the world. It ended up with me in Cambridgeshire, acquired more fine tuning and got varnished over the years, and then Philip Brown of Philip Brown Violins in Newbury agreed to have it for sale in his shop, and this year we received the welcome news that the violin had found an owner.
Below some photographs of violin and the team.
Thanks very much!'
This year LsF have organised projects in Haiti and Antigua and Barbados, and they are planning a project in Malawi for February 2020.
You can read about LsF UK's projects here: http://lsf-uk.org/gallery.html
Naturally, the violins are not actually completely finished in three days, and afterwards require still a lot of work. The team that made this violin was led by then final year student Victor Ortiz from Ecuador, and the other team members were Florence Ford, Emily Cruse and myself. After the race we all did some work on it, and decided the proceeds were to go to the charity LsF when it would be sold. But it still wasn't finished three years later when we had all left Newark and spread over the world. It ended up with me in Cambridgeshire, acquired more fine tuning and got varnished over the years, and then Philip Brown of Philip Brown Violins in Newbury agreed to have it for sale in his shop, and this year we received the welcome news that the violin had found an owner.
Below some photographs of violin and the team.
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Teamwork photographs courtesy of Emily Cruse and Victor Ortiz
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The finished violin
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