1 mins
MAGNUS NEDREGÅRD
MY SPACE A peek into lutherie workshops around the world
ALL PHOTOS MAGNUS NEDREGÅRD
Istarted working in Oslo 15 years ago, and I’ve been based at this shop since 2016. Before that, I was sharing the space with a woodwind workshop in the next room, and eventually got tired of the noise so I moved 100 metres down the road! This workshop is much bigger and airier with much more natural light, which is an important consideration for makers based in Norway. It was originally a cheese shop and bakery, and some of the older residents tell me about the particularly good buns they used to have there. The shop next door is a furniture restorer, so it is nice to have a lot of craftsmanship in this little corner of town.
The layout is a little unusual: the workshop looks out on to the street, so pedestrians can see us at work, but the front door opens on to the stairs, so customers have to walk up a little way to get to us. If they go downstairs, they find themselves in our instrument testing room in the basement. So it’s a little topsy-turvy but works very well for us.
At around 80 sq m, the shop itself is quite small and we have to be quite restrictive on the number of double basses we can receive. There might be enough room for us to have an apprentice, but in Norway apprenticeships need to be part of a high school/upper secondary school subject, and violin making does not exist as a school subject here at all. So all Norwegian violin makers have to be educated abroad.
At the moment, almost 100 per cent of my work is restoration and repair. I actually prefer it to new making, as the social side of it appeals to me more. Although the orchestras in Oslo were hit by the pandemic, the business wasn’t too badly affected. With the Norwegian Academy of Music and the Barratt Due Institute both close by, we continued to have a steady stream of instruments to work on.
INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN LLOYD