1 mins
MY SPACE
LUTHIER JORDI PINTO
LOCATION Barcelona, Spain
The Casa Parramon workshop is right in the centre of Barcelona, in one of the main shopping streets and around 300 metres from the Liceu opera house. The business was founded in 1897 by Ramon Parramon, and in 1909 he relocated to this building, where it’s been ever since. He died in 1961 by which time the workshop was being run by my grandfather. So it has always been a familyrun business. Ramon Parramon was also a composer, and he made the instrument on the back wall; it looks like a small cello but is in fact a ‘viola-tenor’, which he invented himself. It was designed to be played like a cello with a very long endpin but it’s tuned like a viola.It became quite popular in Spain in the 1930s, partly because it was championed by Pablo Casals. A full 55 of these instruments were made at the workshop between 1932 and 1936, but after that came the Spanish Civil War, which caused a lot of changes in Spain’s cultural life, and the demand for viola-tenors disappeared. At that time, Casa Parramon refocused its work on repairs and restoration, which still makes up the vast majority of our work today.
The shop takes up the whole of the building’s first floor. There are six rooms, including three for testing instruments, and the main workshop of 48 sq m. We keep most of the wood we use. The photo only shows around two thirds of the workshop; there’s another large window just to the right, which gives us as much natural light as we need. Mostly we restore Spanish and French instruments, although examples from all countries cross our workbenches at some point. Many of them have been in the workshop for decades, just waiting to be restored; a lot of the old workshop photos show the luthiers working with hundreds of violins hanging above their heads! Restoration is a slow, meticulous task that has always required a lot of time and patience.
INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN LLOYD
Right Musicians can sit down and test their instruments in this room. In the cabinet on the left is a complete set of The Strad magazine, from May 1890 onwards.
ALL PHOTOS JORDI PINTO