1 mins
LUTHIER FILIPPO FASSER
ALL PHOTOS FILIPPO FASSER
LOCATION Brescia, Italy
Like a certain well-known luthier, I was born in Salò in northern Italy and I’ve spent most of my working life in Brescia. I graduated from the Cremona Violin Making School in 1988 and opened my first shop in this city in 1992. Since then I’ve had four workshops in Brescia, having moved into this one in 2012. It’s still a good place for instrument making, and currently there are six luthiers based in the town; it’s close to the mountains and Italian lakes, Cremona and Milan are both within easy reach and we have an active cultural scene.
In total, the shop is 180 sq m including this workspace, my office, a machine room, varnish room and one in which I used to host concerts. We’ve organised around a hundred performances since I moved in, and it was called the officina da camera, being a place for both making and playing instruments for chamber music. I haven’t been so active in scheduling concerts recently, maybe because of the effects of the pandemic; for my part, though, the lockdowns made very little difference as I worked from my home and had a chance to finish the instruments on my waiting list. All the rooms I mentioned are good for testing new instruments, because they’re all different sizes and have various kinds of acoustics.
Many of the instruments I’ve made are based on those by makers I admire: Maggini, Gasparo da Salò and Rogeri, while I sometimes also use examples by Guarneri ‘del Gesù’, the Brothers Amati and Guadagnini. My own workbench can be seen on the left of the picture, while the others are generally used by my assistants, Kate Poulton and Charles Costantini. At the back of the room, above the moulds and templates, you can see a very nice picture of my workbench, along with the array of tools behind; this was done by my daughter, a professional illustrator who’s now based in the Netherlands.
INTERVIEW BY CHRISTIAN LLOYD
Right Since I love being in my workshop so much, I’ve filled my office space with books, paintings, sculptures, drawings and engravings, to try and entice myself in there more often!