1 mins
MY SPACE
LUTHIER JAMIE MARIE LAZZARA
LOCATION Florence, Italy
ALL PHOTOS JAMIE MARIE LAZZARA
My workshop is just six square metres, and could easily be the smallest that’s ever been featured in The Strad. I’ve been working here for the past 34 years and I’ve never felt the need for anything larger. The ceiling’s very high and I have lots of wood, tools, templates and varnish ingredients piled high on the shelves, so I’ve never needed to move. The workshop is ideally situated in the heart of Florence, just a hundred yards from the Palazzo Vecchio, and huge numbers of tourists come past it every day. I have a small shop window that gets a lot of attention, especially the cittern.
I came to Italy from the US in 1979 to study at the International Violin Making School in Cremona.
Unfortunately, when I got there I was told I should have filled in the paperwork in America, so instead I enrolled on a course in fine art restoration in Florence, when I also learnt Italian. I finally graduated from Cremona in 1985 and moved back to Florence, where I opened this workshop in 1987. Six years later I received a commission from Itzhak Perlman to make a copy of his 1714 ‘Soil’ Stradivari. He wanted an exact replica that he could play outdoors, and it’s the violin he used to perform at the inauguration of President Obama in 2009.
In 2000 a location scout for the film Hannibal knocked on the door to ask if they could use the workshop in the film. Apparently the director Ridley Scott had walked past and liked it so much, he wanted to write it into a scene. I offered to clean up, but they wouldn’t hear of it! The scene had Hannibal Lecter pretending to be a tourist interested in the shop, in order to escape the local police. During the filming I talked a lot about classical music and cigars with Anthony Hopkins, who’s been writing his own music for years. In the end, unfortunately the scene was cut from the film, but it can still be viewed on the DVD!
INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN LLOYD