THE JOURNEYMAN YEARS

The time spent between finishing at violin making school and striking out on your own can be critical to a luthier’s learning experience. Peter Somerford finds out what makers should expect from their first jobs in a workshop – and how they can make the most of their time

DE LAUNAY PHOTO ELIZABETH MELCHOIR. GEITHNER PHOTO FLORIAN GEITHNER

One of the formative periods for violin makers and restorers is the time they start work in a professional workshop, having recently graduated from violin making school. It’s clear, from speaking to longestablished and more recently established professionals about their time as a journeyman, that working for others, whether it’s just for a couple of years or for a decade, is an opportunity to develop proficiency, learn new techniques, see and work on lots of instruments, and experience different countries and environments.

As with any competitive field, finding a first job can be made easier by networking and making contacts during college, and by taking every opportunity to be exposed to the trade.

‘I realised very early on that you have to think about jobs and your career right from the start – even before you begin college,’ says the Utrecht-based maker and restorer Hubert de Launay, who worked for Dutch makers Harry Jansen, Melle Wondergem and Guust François, and then Michael Byrd, John Dilworth and Andreas Post before setting up independently in 2019. ‘My teachers at West Dean College were always encouraging students to find a work placement whenever we could in the holidays. We would frequently go to auctions to meet people and see lots of instruments. We’d visit workshops and museums and go on international study trips. This all added up to making us feel comfortable outside the safe space of the college workshop.’

Nebraska-based violin maker Marilyn Wallin, who studied at the Chicago School of Violin Making and is past president of the Violin Society of America, advises young makers: ‘Don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to people in the trade. The violin community wants to know who’s out there, who’s new. The more you get the word out, the more likely you are to get a better job.’ During college, Wallin worked Saturdays in a music store which had a rental programme, and in the summers she apprenticed with violin maker David Wiebe. ‘I also kept up my viola playing through school,’ she says. ‘This was important to me, but it probably made me more valuable as an employee as well.’ After graduating, Wallin landed a two-year apprenticeship at Bein & Fushi in Chicago before leaving to set up a making workshop at home and start a family.

Left–right Hubert de Launay at work; Florian Geithner (right) at a recreation of the historical Bozner Markt in Mittenwald; Marilyn Wallin explains technical drawing to young luthier Duane Brewer; Philip Brown supervises bow maker Rose Handy

WALLIN PHOTO MARILYN WALLIN. BROWN PHOTO PHILIP BROWN VIOLINS

Personal contacts helped Berlin-based maker and restorer Florian Geithner find his first three positions after graduating from the Mittenwald School in 1994. A young maker had returned to Berlin from working in Madrid for the violin maker José María Lozano and mentioned to Geithner that Lozano needed a replacement. ‘I was lucky because I had wanted to go to Spain after finishing my studies,’ says Geithner. ‘And I went to a shop that nobody thought of going to – José María wasn’t a big name.’ A year later, a schoolfriend of Geithner recommended him for a position at the Hans Weisshaar shop in Los Angeles, and two years after that, Geithner replaced another schoolfriend at Florian Leonhard’s shop in London.

As a student, after getting nowhere sending out emails and photographs of his work to leading makers in Europe, the Poznań-based maker Piotr Pielaszek took a road trip around France and Germany with four friends, going from one workshop to another and asking for work placements. Pielaszek says: ‘One of the first makers I wanted to go to was Marcus Klimke in Angers, because I’m quite competitive and Marcus had won big competitions, so I thought working with him would be a good place for me.’ Through the Erasmus study scheme, Pielaszek did a three-month placement with Klimke and, after completing his fourth year of violin making school, started working as Klimke’s assistant and stayed with him for over two years.

The conversion of a placement or internship into a permanent position is in no way guaranteed, but is quite common, which makes securing an internship in the first place even more important. Berlin-based maker and restorer Janine Wildhage trained in Cremona and in the Berlin workshop of Kevin Gentges and Felix Scheit before moving to New York for an internship at Christophe Landon Rare Violins. ‘It just happened that after the internship they needed another person, so I dropped into a full-time position,’ says Wildhage.

‘Sometimes it’s just chance that you’re in the right place at the right moment.’

From an employer’s perspective, what sets a fresh graduate apart from any of their peers? ‘More important than someone’s ability is their attitude,’ says Philip Brown, a restorer and bow maker in Newbury, UK, who during more than 30 years in the trade has mentored and employed numerous makers and restorers, including Warren Bailey and Markus Laine. ‘Nearly all the applications I get for placements and positions come from abroad,’ he adds. ‘To make that journey and come to somewhere where the cost of living is relatively high, especially for a young person, shows a certain level of commitment and determination.’ De Launay says: ‘Nine times out of ten, employers are not looking for the most skilled person. They want someone nice, because they’ve got to share their workshop with them for nine hours a day.’ He adds: ‘I’m always surprised at people who come presenting their college violin in the hope of getting a job. Everyone at college makes a violin, and everyone learns how to make one in roughly the same way. I’m much more interested in someone as a person, and in their mindset and how fast they learn.’ For Pielaszek, a potential assistant should share common ideas and goals with the maker they want to work for. ‘We can have different styles but it’s important to share a general idea about the quality of the instruments we’re making,’ he says.

Janine Wildhage (seated) with Felix Scheit at the Berlin workshop of Gentges and Scheit

COURTESY JANINE WILDHAGE

‘NINE TIMES OUT OF TEN, EMPLOYERS ARE NOT LOOKING FOR THE MOST SKILLED PERSON’

‘It can be difficult if someone doesn’t care as much as about details or quality as I do, and just wants to work fast. Technical skills can come with time, but it’s more difficult if you’re looking for different things.’

Although workplace routines vary, the regular hours at some shops can be a contrast to both student life and the realities of self-employment. In Madrid, Geithner would go to work at 9am and work until six or seven in the evening. ‘Then I’d go out to party! I didn’t sleep much in the first summer,’ he jokes. ‘I learnt Spanish in two months on the job –I had Post-it notes with vocabulary stuck all over the wall. I worked hard, but the regular nine-hour days seemed preferable to being constantly busy with something and having it seep into evenings and weekends – which happens easily when you’re working for yourself, and when you’ve also got billing, computer work, administration and communication to do.’ At Weisshaar’s, too, Geithner found a good divide between work and social life. ‘At 5pm Margaret Shipman, the boss, would say, “Everybody out!”, and she would go and play tennis or go to a concert. The climate was beautiful, and being in California was definitely less stressful than any of my other jobs.’

Wallin’s hours at Bein & Fushi, where she did a six-month trial before specialising in violin and viola set-up, were 9 to 5 with Sundays and Mondays off. ‘I managed to make instruments while I was there by coming in an hour early and staying an hour late, and working on weekends,’ she says.

Pielaszek was also able to fit in new making by working after hours during his time with Klimke: ‘I was renting a room and didn’t have my own space to work in, but Marcus said I could work at weekends and in the evenings at his workshop. So right away I started making instruments for competitions. Taking part in those was a kind of push for me to improve, and winning awards helped me to become recognised.’ It was through success at the Wieniawski Competition in 2016 that Pielaszek found a second employer in the shape of violin maker Andrea Frandsen, who was a judge at that year’s competition.

What a new assistant or employee is expected to do, and how they’re expected to do it, can be quite rigidly defined, but not always. As one of a dozen ‘bench jockeys’ at Bein & Fushi, Wallin was given extremely detailed instructions. ‘The steps were set out in the order in which you had to complete them, and often with which tools you had to use,’ she says. ‘If you did all the steps, without asking, that did the job.’ Geithner recalls that ‘José María had very strict ideas about what to do and how, and because I was young and not so sure of myself I wouldn’t question anything. By the time I was at Florian’s I felt more experienced, and he would understand that his employees had ideas and he would trust us to work as a team and solve problems.’

Brown’s approach with assistants is more free-form. He says: ‘When they come in, I kind of leave them to it, and give them the encouragement and resources so that they can basically teach themselves. They can ask me questions, but ultimately they’re the ones who have to figure things out, and it takes a certain type of person to respond well to that.’ But there is consistency with one of the principal workshop tasks: ‘From day one I get all assistants to do set-up,’ he says. ‘They get quick at it, and it also gets them looking at different instruments.

I also ask them just to clean old violins carefully, because it’s on cleaning that you get to notice things and reflect on what approach you’re going to take with that instrument, rather than rushing into a standard, one-size-fitsall approach.’

Piotr Pielaszek (seated) during his ‘journeyman years’ with Marcus Klimke (standing)

MARCUS KLIMKE

Wallin emphasises the importance, if you’re a new employee, of making notes, detailing how the employer wants specific tasks to be done. In a similar vein, Brown says: ‘Markus Laine used to do something that I think everybody should do, which is write a diary of what happened each day and reflect on it. We tend to repeat mistakes, and writing a diary is a very good way of not repeating them.’

In a busy shop that handles rare instruments, wide-eyed first-jobbers should take a ‘look, but don’t touch’ approach, advises Wallin, ‘until you’re offered’. Wildhage says, ‘When you’re doing restoration as an intern, it’s not as if you start on the most expensive instruments. You might begin with a project that belongs to the employer and not with customers’ instruments. But slowly you’re taught how to treat those instruments, and your colleagues know how to guide you, because they had to learn as well, and they know the problems you have in the beginning.’

Wildhage gained further restoration experience working for Yves Gateau and Daniel Kogge in Berlin, and Pierre Barthel in Paris. ‘Changing shops increases the breadth of your knowledge, and you can compare techniques and find which ones you prefer,’ she says. ‘With restoration, there are a lot of times when you have to make a decision on which way to proceed with an instrument, both from an ethical point of view and also the aesthetic perspective. How to take this kind of decision might vary from one shop to another, so you develop these judgements as you move along in your career, and it’s important to reflect on those decisions.’

Pielaszek credits Klimke for carefully explaining techniques and tool selection, for teaching him how to prepare wood well, and for showing him the importance of an organised workspace. ‘Marcus explained that each tool has a purpose and that you have to use it efficiently,’ he says. ‘For example, he explained that a scraper is for cleaning the surface, not really for shaping it. So whereas at school we would spend a lot of time and effort scraping, I learnt how to shape the arching with a gouge and thumb plane as far as I could take it and only use a scraper at the end, which is a much more efficient approach and allows you to focus more on the style. With wood preparation I learnt to look beyond the grain to the fibres and medullary rays. And I saw that if your workplace and workflow are organised and everything is clean and neat, you can work faster.’

‘THE STEPS WERE SET OUT IN THE ORDER IN WHICH YOU HAD TO COMPLETE THEM, OFTEN WITH WHICH TOOLS YOU HAD TO USE’

Above left Marilyn Wallin advises luthier Matt Young on installing a bass-bar Right Rose Handy, Markus O’Barden, Edward Gaut and Andres Enslle during their time at Philip Brown Violins

At Bein & Fushi, Wallin built up speed in her work without compromising accuracy, and she learnt some useful lessons in patience too. ‘One was to dry-clamp everything before you heat up the glue pot and set about gluing things together,’ she says.

‘And sharpen up your tools at the end of the day, so they’re ready for you when you start the next. I’ve never been sorry for a single minute I’ve spent sharpening tools.’

Interacting with customers, or at least watching such interactions, is not always possible for assistants because of the way some workshops are set up. But such opportunities can open up for employees, as Geithner found when he moved from London to Vienna to work for Marcel Richters at Dietmar Machold’s shop. He says: ‘I had not seen customers when I was at Florian’s, and none too at José María’s in Madrid, but at Machold I started doing more repairs and maintenance than restorations, and a lot of customer work for the first time. We would adjust violins for leading soloists, and at first you were apprehensive, but then you just got on and did it.’ Back in the UK, Brown’s assistants have also had the opportunity to connect with customers. ‘Some shops shield the customers from the workshop, and I think that’s sad,’ he says. ‘If my assistant was doing a repair, they would deal with the customer from start to finish.’

Florian Geithner (right) with Nikolaus Hoffmann and Florian Leonhard in 1999

WALLIN PHOTO MARILYN WALLIN

Alongside all the opportunities for developing skills and technique, and for seeing what’s involved in running a business, the journeyman experience can open up new career directions, especially for makers who discover a passion for restoration.

‘During my apprenticeship in Berlin I much preferred making,’ says Wildhage. ‘But in New York I was given quite a large restoration job during my internship, and doing this in a new environment, surrounded by fine instruments and dedicated colleagues, fired my interest in restoration.’

For others, working in different workshops ultimately helps reaffirm their original career goals. De Launay’s interest in research – and in particular the early Dutch makers – was sparked by a study trip at college, but was later reinforced by working for violin maker and writer John Dilworth. ‘I like the depth that the craft offers – all the history and all the different styles, not just Cremonese,’ says De Launay. ‘I’ve always wanted to do a mixture of research, restoring and making.’ After doing four years of full-time restoration with Andreas Post from 2015 to 2018, De Launay realised he missed making. ‘At first I wasn’t sure how I’d get back to it, but returning to it with new knowledge and an understanding of so many different styles was the best experience. My violin making became much more free and open because I had a liberated perspective.’