How Many Violins?

[Stephen Fine]

Does someone know, or would someone point me in the right direction:

 

How many violins have been constructed?  How many are extant?  Do we have any numbers from the biggest violin factories (historical and modern)?  How long do violins last?  How many instruments can a 3 person workshop produce in a year?  7 person workshop?  20 person workshop?  How many people have been employed in the largest operations?  What is the history of mechanization in the industry?  What are the different ways that quality and quantity interact?

 

Or anything along any of those lines.

[uncle duke]

The best I could even possibly even relate to would be the 3 person workshop and what they could produce in a year.  Let's assume it's the 14-16 work hours per day scenario with any possible machine available for use when needed other than a plate duplicator.  I'd think 40 could be done in a year.  Maybe half a day off per week for sanity's sake.  

[Conor Russell]

Remind me never to ask you for a job Uncle duke.

[nathan slobodkin]

A well trained workman in a well set up shop can easily make a white violin in 100 hours. Varnish and set up add another 16 hours at most  I have seen a viola which the soloist owner said was made by her husband for her in 4 days including Varnish. I have heard of other instruments made in that length of time and have personally seen a violin varnished completely in less than one hour. Rene Morel said that the Mirecourt makers made three finished bodies a week. My personal best was 37 white cellos in 18 months.  

[MANFIO]

Whenever I read about Renè Morel making 3 voilin bodies a week I ask myself "were are all these violins?".

[nathan slobodkin]

Whenever I read about Renè Morel making 3 voilin bodies a week I ask myself "were are all these violins?".

Manfio

I just found a reference that claimed that in the early 20th century 680 people were employed as Luthiers in Mirecourt producing some 80,000 instruments per year. Sounds to me like  they were hustling. As to where are they now I threw out two last week that were beyond help.  

[nathan slobodkin]

By the way I have seen with mine own eyes a guy handed 6 finished ribsets and 6 sets of raw wood Monday morning and hand back 6 finished bodies ready for necks at the end of the week.

[martin swan]

Reghin is the biggest violin-making town in Europe, almost equivalent to Mirecourt in the early 20th century.

For one person to make 6 violins a month is regarded as a bit slow - OK for a "master violin" or an old-timer but not for the regular stuff (100 hours for a white violin would be considered absurd).

Nathan's Mirecourt statistic averages out at 9.8 instruments per worker per month, remarkably close!

 

Of course none of these violins come close in tonal quality to what a serious contemporary maker might spend a month over ...

[Conor Russell]

I spoke with a maker from Reighin recently who had worked in the fiddle workshops. He told me that the makers there specialised in one job at a time, and that one was expected to carve 70 bellies or 50 backs in a day. I couldn't believe it, but he insisted it was true. He was on Bass bars, and I can't remember his quota. He had to fit glue and trim the bars and then close the fiddles in batches of six.

 

I met a bowmaker who was trained in one of the big East German workshops. There, they made a bow in 81 steps, and on a given day they would do one step. They worked incredibly quickly because they were paid just a few pence for each piece.

 

Jacob has said that the old German trade makers were expected to make a fiddle in a day, and I can believe him. There's a video on line of a workshop in China, and the speeds there are similar. It's very far removed from what we do as individual makers.

[JohnCockburn]

I spoke with a maker from Reighin recently who had worked in the fiddle workshops. He told me that the makers there specialised in one job at a time, and that one was expected to carve 70 bellies or 50 backs in a day.

definitely pulling your plonker there Conor I reckon.

[nathan slobodkin]

When people are working in a shop  that produces instruments but doesn't do repairs and is not open to the public they can be remarkably efficient. In the shop where I trained each guy had a work station where a particular job was done.  There was a ribset making station where two guys made 6 to 12 or more ribsets per day depending on size and to a small extent quality. They had a rough thickness sander,  good jigs to hold ribs for scraping and their bending irons were hot all day long .A workman would spend at least a few months at a station and became extremely efficient at that job. Guys who had mastered a certain job would be moved to another station and spend long enough to master that one eventually becoming sort of utility workers who could work any station as required. Some jobs required more skills than others and differing abilities determined who was trained as a real instrument maker and who stayed as basically an assembly line worker. Even then being practiced at a given job was a slightly fluid thing. When I was setting necks for all of the student instruments, for instance, I found that the first neckset Monday morning was noticably slow and it might take an hour and a half for the first one while the last one of the day might be down to as little as twenty five minutes or so. We worked long hours didn't speak much except at breaks and the whole place kind of buzzed with a competitive spirit to see who could get the most done.  People who had graduated to signing their own instruments still made instruments in batches to capitalize on the efficiency of repetition. I made two cellos at a time and violins or violas in groups of three or four. Even the master makers used assistants to handle mechanical jobs. Arching plates was done or certainly finished by the guy who signed the fiddle but graduation was done according to the masters instructions and a well trained assistant could take the entire plate down to 3 mm exactly according to the dial caliper and then give the top back to the master for final graduation. Likewise several of the master makers would sometimes ask me if I could fit in a neck set for them and tell me the specs which they wanted which were expected to be dead on within  a tenth of a mm, After I left the shop I understand they came up with a neck setting machine and some other mechanical short cuts but there are still a lot of very good instruments being made there today using pretty much traditional methods.

[Stephen Fine]

This is good stuff.  Thanks.

 

So it sounds like the economic history of the violin family has yet to be formally, comprehensively assembled.

[Violadamore]

This is good stuff.  Thanks.

 

So it sounds like the economic history of the violin family has yet to be formally, comprehensively assembled.

IMHO, it's more like it has yet to be formally acknowledged that violin mills are as old as the instrument and all the famous historic makers ran them  .

 

Thanks for the anecdotes  .

[Will L]

 

 

How long do violins last? 

 

 

We don't know exactly, since the earliest date from about the mid 1,500s; and the few of those which are extant can still be used.  Whether they will be useful in another 100-200 years remains to be seen.

 

So we know that if they don't get damaged beyond repairability, and are maintained, they can last at least 450+ years.

[Stephen Fine]

IMHO, it's more like it has yet to be formally acknowledged that violin mills are as old as the instrument and all the famous historic makers ran them  .

 

Thanks for the anecdotes  .

Are they as old as the instrument?  Factories/Cottage industries are a development of the industrial revolution, no?  Are there examples of large shops operating prior to 1760?

 

We don't know exactly, since the earliest date from about the mid 1,500s; and the few of those which are extant can still be used.  Whether they will be useful in another 100-200 years remains to be seen.

 

So we know that if they don't get damaged beyond repairability, and are maintained, they can last at least 450+ years.

 

Indeed.  But I was more interested in how long violins last on average.  What is the attrition rates for good and bad instruments (I assume there's a pretty big difference).  For example, Stradivari made approximately 1100 instruments and we have 650 of them today.

[Rue]

Yes...but I think a lot of those were lost in fires, shipwrecks, stolen and never recovered (so who knows what happened to them)...

 

Versus those that were actually 'used up'.

[Violadamore]

Are they as old as the instrument?  Factories/Cottage industries are a development of the industrial revolution, no?  Are there examples of large shops operating prior to 1760?

 

 

Indeed.  But I was more interested in how long violins last on average.  What is the attrition rates for good and bad instruments (I assume there's a pretty big difference).  For example, Stradivari made approximately 1100 instruments and we have 650 of them today.

Ummm... are you calling Amati, Stradivari, and the shops all along the South German trade routes supplying Italian demand small operations?  BTW, cottage production long predates industrialization.  

 

No, no, no!  Strad made maybe 1100 and today we have millions. Just look at the style and read the labels.  Great violins obviously multiply.     

[Stephen Fine]

Ummm... are you calling Amati, Stradivari, and the shops all along the South German trade routes supplying Italian demand small operations?  BTW, cottage production long predates industrialization.  

 

I am calling the Amati and Stradivari workshops small (or medium).  Weren't they?  At least compared to the French and German operations of a century later?  See, this is what I'm trying to figure out.

 

And though I'm sure cottage industry predates the industrial revolution, it certainly was a hallmark of the early industrial revolution and it led to factory systems.