Robert Buchanan Violin from Amati

[Mr.Rieding]

I can't help but think this violin might have been in the wrong auction. As an antiques collector I'd imagine this would do far better in a war artiacts or trench art auction. If the provenance is true, this violin is a rather remarkable feat of human ingenuity. Imagine making this object of relative beauty in such strife.

https://app.amati.com/en/auction/1127-amati-specialist-29th-30th-october/71-a-violin-by-david-r-buchanan-1943

[Dr. Mark]

Possibly also a remarkable feat of time management, considering the circumstances...

 

[Shelbow]

I can't find any direct sources, but I believe it is documented that he did make instruments whilst serving during WWII.

Tarisio also mention it.

https://tarisio.com/cozio-archive/browse-the-archive/makers/maker/?Maker_ID=4597

[deans]

Its cool. I wonder what tools he would have had available.

[Violadamore]

23 hours ago, deans said:

Its cool. I wonder what tools he would have had available.

He could probably put a nice set together.  IMHO, military scrounging is an underappreciated art form.      Anybody know if this was the same David R. Buchanan who's known as a painter from the Cotswolds about that time, and studied at the Hornsey School of Art (London) before joining the RAF?  

[GeorgeH]

"Made in the desert during WWII from a beech gatepost, pine from the cookhouse and ammunition boxes."

When a story is beyond belief it usually is.

[Shelbow]

1 hour ago, GeorgeH said:

"Made in the desert during WWII from a beech gatepost, pine from the cookhouse and ammunition boxes."

When a story is beyond belief it usually is.

Wood Green and Southgate Weekly Herald - Friday 14 January 1944

[GeorgeH]

Still skeptical. That violin was made with violin-making tools. Look at the purfling inlay, for example. That wasn't done with a pocket knife in the desert. And where did he get the glue and the bending irons? Getting just the wood is the easy part.

It makes a good story but I doubt it is true.

[Violadamore]

3 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

Still skeptical. That violin was made with violin-making tools. Look at the purfling inlay, for example. That wasn't done with a pocket knife in the desert. And where did he get the glue and the bending irons? Getting just the wood is the easy part.

It makes a good story but I doubt it is true.

 

He would have been a very rare bird-of-passage for the times, a male nursing orderly with an RAF Mobile Field Hospital attached to Desert Air Force headquarters.  Given the nature of air combat, his duties would likely have been episodic depending on what missions were flying (and patient load was) at any given time, and might have been limited to assisting the female nurses with tasks that required greater strength or more exposure to hazards, and janitorial duties.  It could have been that most of what he did was drive an ambulance to and from the flight line. I can easily imagine him with time on his hands, as well as good opportunities to trade and scrounge for things (which, based on memoirs by WW 2 British medical personnel, might have been part of his routine duties, as regular supply channels were sometimes inadequate).  

https://www.casematepublishers.com/9781399088428/nursing-at-the-frontline/

https://www.ww2talk.com/index.php?threads/help-with-ramc-nursing-orderly-history.102104/

 

[GeorgeH]

1 hour ago, Violadamore said:

I can easily imagine him with time on his hands, as well as good opportunities to trade and scrounge for things (which, based on memoirs by WW 2 British medical personnel, might have been part of his routine duties, as regular supply channels were sometimes inadequate).  

Being able to use "time on his hands" to build a violin in the desert from scratch during a war with no violin-making tools seems highly unlikely.

Occam's razor tells me that the simplest explanation for this story is that it was made up. However, I would believe that he whittled the awful scroll with a penknife and maybe the myth grew from there.  

[deans]

The pretty nice looking wood on the top looks like it was quarter cut for violin making, I would think its lucky break to find a piece in the firewood pile. 

[jamesbuchanan]

23 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

When a story is beyond belief it usually is.

Morning all,

I knew the maker. He was my great uncle and a remarkably gentle man. He served, both out in the desert and in Italy, and nothing would have been more like him than to have painted and made instruments at the time. 

@Violadamore yes, he ended up being a painter in the Cotswolds, ending up living just outside Oxford in Eynsham.

16 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

Being able to use "time on his hands" to build a violin in the desert from scratch during a war with no violin-making tools seems highly unlikely.

There is an unsourced quotation that seems to cover at least half of this point... war is “months of intolerable boredom interspersed with moments of agonising fear.” As for tools - I don't think they were short of tools, or the skills to make new ones at that point.

Anyway, sorry for the waffle - the nub is that, yes, I am entirely confident that the violin was made out in the desert during / around the battle of El Alamein.

 

 

Edited November 4, 2025 by jamesbuchanan
Edited to remove further waffle re. portraits of spitfire pilots, as nobody in the family seems to know where they ended up...

[GeorgeH]

8 hours ago, jamesbuchanan said:

the nub is that, yes, I am entirely confident that the violin was made out in the desert during / around the battle of El Alamein.

People come with all kinds of wild stories around their violins, often involving "it happened during the war." People post them here with some frequency. 

The fact is that the more suppositions, surmises, speculations, and conjectures that one needs to believe to support a fantastical story, the less likely the story is to be true (Occam's razor). There are a lot of all of these in this story making it highly unlikely to be true. 

And look at the violin: Only the neck and scroll look like they could have been whittled out in the desert by an amateur. The body of the violin was clearly made by somebody with the knowledge and proper tools to build a violin. Note also that the neck is short and shimmed suggesting it was a poor fit to the otherwise neatly made fiddle body.

So while I certainly appreciate that your great uncle was a remarkably gentle man and that he might possible at least carved the amateurish scroll in the desert, the rest of the story is really unbelievable.

[violinsRus]

2 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

The body of the violin was clearly made by somebody with the knowledge and proper tools to build a violin.

Well, the dimensions are somewhat non-standard aren't they?  And the profile, ff placement and treatment of the corners a bit loose.  So maybe it was made with poor access to accurate plans or a model to copy.  But we could speculate on and on I guess...  

[martin swan]

Having seen many dozens if not hundreds of very good amateur English violins from this period, I find the story entirely credible.

No offence to Jamie's great uncle but those f-holes are in a very strange place, and the whole thing was obviously built by eye without a mold.

[jamesbuchanan]

8 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

So while I certainly appreciate that your great uncle was a remarkably gentle man

[Andrew tkinson]

I am no expert but can totally believe the story of the making of this violin.

During wartime, I understand, from what I have read, there is a lot of waiting around between bouts of terrible action so I think spare time would have not been a problem, making a violin would be great to pass the time and take a person's mind off the terrible events going on and yet to happen.

I expect tools would have not been too much of a problem also as I think an army support unit would have craftsmen, blacksmiths, carpenters, even maybe a small mobile machine shop as they had to be able to make and fix stuff out in the middle of the dessert. They would have had tools which could be borrowed or could alter them if needed for violin making purposes .

I also think that if time is not a problem a violin could be made with a small amount of tools.I reckon you could do quite a bit even if you only had Occam's razor, it could be reshaped to make a small chisel or two, a gouge and maybe a scraper. (Occam would have been pleased as he preferred to keep things simple and grow a beard?)

The bending iron could be made easily and heated over a fire (I have made and use a bending iron like this to bend my plain wood ribs and find it works well). Closing clamps could be made from scrap wood (I made the closing clamps I use from scrap wood and cork floor tiles) Two fixed distance purfling markers, one for each side of the channel could be readily made from a scalpel blade embedded in a piece of L shaped wood, then channel then deepened with a knife. etc etc. I'm sure purfling could be made but it could easily have been ordered from home along with maybe some pegs and hide glue.

Regarding materials, I have , in the past, had some nice wood from skips, so I reckon if time was not an issue, searching patiently through each new cookhouse firewood delivery some nice usable bits would have turned up eventually.

I am always amazed at what people can achieve if they have the skill, time and a strong enough desire.

[GeorgeH]

I guess that if one believes that the same hands that made the scroll of that violin also made the body, then that is obviously their choice. 

As @martin swan pointed out, there are thousands of these wonky violins floating around out there. It’s much more likely that this is just one of those with an unlikely story attached to it.

But people believe what they want to believe, including me. 

[jamesbuchanan]

1 hour ago, GeorgeH said:

I guess that if one believes that the same hands that made the scroll of that violin also made the body, then that is obviously their choice. 

@GeorgeH I knew him. He was making violins at the kitchen table when I was a boy. He made both bodies and scrolls and his work is remarkably consistent, you can see them pop up in auctions from time to time.

 

[jacobsaunders]

33 minutes ago, jamesbuchanan said:

I knew him

perhaps you should buy the fiddle then

[Pluto Vermin]

On 11/3/2025 at 1:26 PM, Violadamore said:

He would have been a very rare bird-of-passage for the times, a male nursing orderly with an RAF Mobile Field Hospital attached to Desert Air Force headquarters. 

It's not a bad gig.