Ep 16. Nicolos grand plan or ”Grand Pattern”? The new-age violin part 3

Welcome to another episode of “The Violin Chronicles” podcast that delves into the lives and legacies of the world's most renowned artisans and craftsmen. In today's episode, we journey back in time to explore the extraordinary craftsmanship of Nicolo Amati, a name synonymous with the art of violin making. In this Episode we look at a major turning point in this history of Cremonese violin making that you simply cannot miss. After the great plague of 1630 Nicolo is picking up the pieces of his life and moving on. Tracing the footsteps of this master luthier we will uncover the secrets behind Nicolo Amati's enduring legacy, a legacy marked by precision, passion, and innovation. From his early years in Cremona, Italy, to the workshop where he meticulously crafted some of the most exquisite violins in history. We'll also explore his influence on subsequent generations of violin makers, including the revered Stradivari and Guarneri families and how they were so greatly influenced by this master luthier. Through interviews with experts in the field and insights from contemporary violin makers inspired by Amati's genius, this episode offers a deep dive into the world of stringed instrument craftsmanship. Whether you're a seasoned musician, a lover of fine arts, or simply curious about the magic behind the music, Nicolo Amati's story is sure to captivate your imagination. So, tune in as we unravel the enchanting tale of Nicolo Amati, the craftsman who transformed wood and strings into timeless works of art that continue to resonate with the world's most discerning musicians and collectors. Get ready for an enriching and harmonious journey through the life and work of this true master of the craft. Transcript In the last episode of the Violin Chronicles, something kind of crazy happened. The bubonic plague that swept through northern Italy basically killed every violin maker. Except one, Nicolo Amati, which made him, I suppose, the best violin maker in Italy, right? But all that aside, he was still a very talented craftsman, thankfully. So just imagine about half the people you know and don't know in your life dying in a very short space of time. There's war, famine, crazy inflation, and pandemic ever looming on the horizon. This is Nicolo's life right now. Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting violin makers of history. I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now, and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie in Mircourt. As well as being a luthier, I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with. And in particular, the lives of those who made them. So often when we look back at history, I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect, but here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture. So join me as I wade through tales, not only of fame, famine, and war, but also of love, artistic genius, Revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning, and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin. Before I start the show today, I would like to say a really big thank you to some Patreon members, Joe F.,Charlotte F., and Nicoree K. Thank you for keeping the show happening. And if you'd like to join them, head over to patreon.com. So far in this series on the Amatis, we have seen Andrea Amati, the first big name to come from Cremona, making his mark by crafting a stunning set of instruments for the French court of Charles IX. Then the Amarti brothers, who were Andrea's two sons, carry on the family workshop amidst tumultuous times. They have a fight and split the workshop. The older brother, Antonio, moves down the street and the younger brother, Girolamo, stayed on in the family workshop. His son, Niccolo, managed to survive the plague and now here we are in the 1630s at the third generation of the family. This week, we find Nicolo Amati in his workshop making, making, making violins, and then he starts to change what he is doing, and the decisions Nicolo makes will start to transform the landscape of the violin forever. So stay with me as we work out what these changes were and how they rocked the violin world. I speak to Benjamin Hebbert, expert dealer and author in Oxford. Normally when we talk about Amati, often people are actually referring to Nicolo Amati. Why do you think he's so important and why, and how is he different from the others? Well, I think the amazing thing about all of the Amatis is how things change. And you would have thought that once, once you've sort of set upon something like this, at least, you know, decade to decade, you'd have, you know, very, very little change. But when you look at Cremonese instruments, you know, even two instruments made in the same year have got some level of fundamental difference to them and you know, this, this idea, almost like a painter, uh, you know, the canvas might be restricted to making a violin, but, you know, a painter who has to paint a hundred portraits of the same king never stops being creative about each portrait, and that's sort of, that's sort of where you seem to be with violinists. Just through the late 16th century, 17th century, builds up ideas. But Nicolo Amati in about 1630, in fact the earliest Nicolos where he does this are, uh, you know, possibly late, late 1620s, are actually ones where he's still using his, his father and his uncle's label. But he produces a grand pattern of violin. This might not seem unfamiliar to us now, because that's what becomes the pattern of violin. You know, that's eventually what Stradivari adopts. It's what the violin in your case is. But that's, that's Nicolo's improvement. Nicolo Amati is making his grand pattern violin. But what is so special about the grand pattern? So much is happening in his life and musically at this time. And up until this point, Nicolo Amati is still using his father's and uncle's labels, the Amati brothers label. And this is somehow very symbolic. He is still carrying on the tradition of his family, of his uncle and brother. He's not yet using his very own label, but this is about to change. I talk about difference, but with Andrea Amati, I know we're talking about Nicolo here. Uh, Andrea Amati, everything is mathematical. He figures out the inside of the instrument as based on this geometry on, on, uh, what we call catenary curves, the arching, and he figures out the outside as curtate cycloids, which fit around that. The scrolls are absolutely perfect Fibonacci sequence. Scrolls like an ammonite, you know, everything's perfection. And I think as that travels through until the 1620s, everything is fixed. On the idea of the violin, the Cremonese violin, being an orchestral violin. And therefore you can't, you can't get away from that design which becomes bigger or smaller. So Niccolo's Grand Pattern. To start with, if you can remember back to the episodes on Andrea Amati, we spoke about his order of instruments for Charles IX. In this order, there were 1st and 2nd violins, violas and cellos. The 1st violins are smaller than what we would today consider a full sized instrument, and the 2nd violins are what Nicolò Amati based his grand pattern on, and today is what we call a cello. A standard full sized violin. There are still some of these smaller sized Amatis that we come across in the workshop from time to time. These are lent to very talented children and are considered seven eighths or three quarters. But it is interesting to note that these were not children's instruments, So the sizes of these violins, I'll start with the first violins, the little one, their body, their back length is 342 millimeters. That's 13. 5 inches for the, for my lovely American listeners. And for the larger violins, they're 355 millimeters. So 14 inches. And that's your standard violin today. So I just want to say that I realized that a lot of you listeners are actually American, and I've been using meters and millimeters and kilometers. So I'm sorry, I'm going to try and put in some imperial measurements for you. So why did Nicolo Amati make his grand pattern violin? What was wrong with the model Andrea Amati had developed and had been working perfectly well up until now? sonatas, which the solo sonatas, which are appearing in In Venice, and Rome in particular, in the 1620s, the idea of having a more solo voice for the, for the violin emerges, and really what Nicolò Amati does is he says, well, this isn't so important. Sometimes we can make a violin wider. And that will have a miraculous effect on how the bridge is supported by, by the arching and that will create something which actually has a much, a much broader voice, something which is profoundly different. He's working with all the same ideas which, you know, which is inherited from 50 years beforehand. And by, but he's actually, The first person he's able to, and I suspect because the musicians are asking him to, to make the modern violin, the modern full size violin, which is wider and more Based on the second violin, because they seem to prefer second violins to first violins. We all do. Sure, Ben. So here we have it. The modern violin. The grand patterns are the things which are absolutely absolutely wonderful, which happened from the 1620s right the way through to his death in 1684 and with increasing interest. So by the 1660s, that's almost all that he's making. For some reason, Nicolo Amati survived the plague, but now being the head of the family, he had many responsibilities. Looking after the various widowed and orphaned members of the clan, running a business and a household. All this under the burden of grief and the economy at a standstill. Now, famine disease was sweeping through the countryside, decimating the population yet again. And if that wasn't bad enough, the occasional army would tramp through the city wanting to cross the Po on Cremona's convenient pontoon bridge, stripping the town of any supplies they had. It was hard, to say the least, for everyone, and the Violin trade would definitely have suffered. In these years, Nicolò Amati would do anything he could just to get by. Today, we have instruments made by Nicolò Amati during these years. They include violins, cellos and gambas, all beautifully crafted. While the city he lived in was being ruined by this disease that would wipe out half its population, Nicolò and his family managed to survive. After the initial crisis of the plague and the subsequent famine that followed, Cremona with its fertile countrysides and the city were all solitude and desert. Agriculture was abandoned and fields left uncultivated. The wealthiest citizens were able to avoid taxation and were not obliged to house soldiers garrisoned in the area. The tax collectors were sucking the farming peasants dry and their productivity was diminishing. In 1635 there are many houses in the city not lived in or abandoned. People started destroying their houses to make money selling the raw materials. And the Podesta ordered a fine of 500 scudi to anyone who deliberately destroyed their house and implemented corporal punishment to stop the slow destruction of the city's buildings. In a matter of months, Cremona had lost almost half its inhabitants. They were left with the skeleton of a city. One person describing it as “A spectacle of nothing but horror, squalor, misery and crime”. The fields were deserted and agriculture was abandoned, as were many of the buildings in the city. From this collapse, Cremona very slowly recovered, never fully reaching her former glory. Its population basically stagnated for over a century, but this does not mean that it was an unsuccessful city. Despite all this tragedy, a glimmer of hope existed. The plague of 1630 had not only wiped out most of Nicolò Amati’s family, it had also killed all of his competition in Brescia and everywhere else. The Brescian violin making tradition came to an abrupt end with the death of Giovanni Paolo Maggini, the brilliant student of Gasparo Da Salo. Cities such as Milan, Genoa and Naples lost as much as half of their populations. But if you wanted one of those oh so desirable Italian violins, Nicolò Amati was your man. Literally, he was like the only guy left. After the effects of the plague had died down, business had come back slowly. People were obviously more concerned with avoiding starvation than music and buying musical instruments. Orders for luxury items such as cremonese violins were not the top of the list for noblemen and rich families. But judging by the surviving instruments, the output of the Amati workshop was quite substantial in the 1620s and 30s. It was drastically reduced. They were the plague years. But life gradually returned to normal, and the Amatis were still the most illustrious violin workshop in Italy, and probably the world at the time. And, and it's in Nicolò Amatis life that they have this really huge plague in the 16th century. 16th century. 1630s, that wipes out basically all the Brescian makers, uh, Nicola's father, his mother, some sisters, like huge amount of family members. And then he's, he's sort of like at the end of it, he's just like, they're just left with whoever's left who's survived. And he has like a bunch of, um, like orphaned family members that he's looking after. And surprisingly he does make instruments this time as well. And things, I mean, and afterwards things sort of pick up. I mean, like all his competition has died. So. If you wanted a Cremonese instrument, he’s your man. He's like, he's it. Yes. I'm Dr. Emily Brayshaw I'm an honorary research fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney in the School of Design. Um, I'm a fashion and costume historian and costume designer, but I also play viola, so I've definitely got an interest in the intersection of performance costume and theatrical costume. Yeah, so the Great Plague of London was 1665 and 66, and that was the worst outbreak of plague in the world. Um, England, for example, since, um, 1348 and, you know, London lost around 15 percent of its population. But what's happening at these great times of plague is that there are these incredible opportunities for social mobility for the survivors because suddenly you inherit absolutely everything. Or you can reinvent yourself. Um, there's a lot of material wealth left behind that you can access, can retrain and re skill. And so it's incredibly sad. And for Amati, there are even more opportunities for him that open up. Yeah. So the, in Italy, the big one, well, the big one that affected his family was the 1630, the 1630 And then seven years later, you have the world's first commercial opera house in Venice that opens up. So you still have this, um, it's like they hit the ground running after the play. You know, you've got the opera is still going. We're like, we're going to open a huge opera house. But interesting in the 1629, 1630s plagues, they were trying to contain it. And in Milan, next to Cremona, for example, they. They quarantined the city, they locked it down, but then the carnival season came and they're like, oh, we'll just, we'll just open it up. Oh gee, is that like what just happened with COVID around the world, you know? And then it's just like, That, that, when they opened it up and it went through and they lost, uh, in some of the cities, they lost 50 percent of their population. It was just huge. It's massive. Yeah. So, and also at this time people, so Cremona, like we said, it was often getting, getting, getting flattened by armies moving through. So if you had money, like today we would invest in safe property because we're not that afraid of an army coming and flattening, you Yes. But back then, maybe you'd invest, not, maybe you wouldn't want to invest in property, maybe, uh, and then a lot of people invested in, in items of value. Well, the thing is they're portable. Yeah. You can pick them up and run. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, it's actually one of the reasons that, um, for a long time in Europe, Jewish people have been associated with the violin. Because not only is it an item of value that you can pick up and run with, but it's also, um, a way that you can support yourself and you don't need to necessarily learn the language. Yeah. So, you know, you, we've, we've got these, these wonderful things. So, and a particularly, you know, incredibly valuable instrument. If you have to sell it to survive, well, you've at least got something there. Things like jewellery as well. You invest in jewellery because you can pick it, take it up. And Nicolo Amati has a brother in law, and when he dies, in his will, he has several houses, but also, uh, um, clothes, clothing. Yeah. So that shows the, the, um, the value attached to clothing. Absolutely. And it was very, very common for people to bequeath clothing, um, textiles, bedding as well. Towels, linens, all of Manchester, all of these things, um, would be bequeathed. Sometimes people would leave items to their servants who could then on sell them or, uh, you know, or remake them for themselves as well. It's interesting that we were talking about these Catherine de Medici productions as well because because sort of around a similar time in England, you've got sort of theatre, Renaissance theatre happening. And a lot of the time the theatre troops would use cast off clothing from nobility for their costumes. They'd remake that as well because of the value associated with these textiles. Because sometimes, um, nobles would sell their clothes because they needed the money, you know? Yeah, it's like when you see like these really Sometimes you get like a really wealthy person selling off all their handbags. Yeah, exactly. The Birkin bag. The war that had caused all their hardship was still going on intermittently. But the people of Cremona just wanted to go about their daily lives. And Nicolo Amati was no exception. In the Amati household, Nicolo was juggling running the shop and family matters. His oldest sister, Elisabetta, and her daughter, Angela had moved back in since her husband had passed away in the plague. Another sister, Vittoria, and her husband, Domenico, were living with them, as well as various nephews and nieces. And yet another sister, whose husband, Vincenzo, had died, leaving Niccolo to execute his will, was living with them. This turned out to be more complicated than he had imagined. Vincenzo, his deceased brother in law, had debts. But he also owned property, and into the mix he owed Nicolo Amati himself for that time he had paid to secure his release from prison. Even dead, Vincenzo was creating problems. His older sister, Vittoria, had recently married Domenico and they were living in the Amati home. Nicolo and Domenico were getting on well, and so when he offered to help in working out Vincenzo's will, this seemed like a good idea at the time. And a solution to Nicolo's problems. Things were going so well, in fact, that Nicolo and Domenico went into business together. Three years on, things were not going so well. Nicolo and Domenico could not resolve their differences to whatever problems they were having and had to call in someone to arbitrate. This ended with Domenico leaving and never returning to the Amati workshop. Elizabeth, his older sister, had to give her approval, throwing her in the middle of this family dispute. But in the end, the brothers in law split the business, Nicolo Amati keeping all the items in the workshop and having to pay Domenico 600 lire, which he took his time repaying. The settlement dragged on for years. Nicolo Amati was now the sole owner of the workshop and the family home. There was still a house full to look after even though he was not married himself and had no children. There were siblings, nephews, nieces, and small cousins to keep track of. A steady stream of instruments were leaving the workshop. More musicians were needed in orchestras as this new thing, opera, was taking off and Nicolò was as busy as ever. In 1637 the world's first commercial opera house opened in Venice playing to thousands. If the violin at this point was not a gentleman's choice of instrument. How did it get its big break? Something very interesting happened to the violin between the period of 1640 to 1660 after the Great Plague swept across Europe that could explain why this instrument is so beloved today. Benjamin Hebert explains. What happens geopolitically is René Descartes and all of that stuff and the beginning of the Enlightenment. I mean, you know, Descartes wrote all sorts of things about music, but I think, I think there might be a little a little less rigidity in what high art music is. And you know, through Monteverdi and everything, this high art music is always sort of referential to something, as it sort of frees up. And you know, the lute and the viol with their frets, the frets are actually about reference to universal harmony and all of that kind of stuff. And I think people just chill out. Really is the best way to put it and part of that chilling out is, you know, this really is the period that dance music, you know, morphs into sonata form and all of that kind of stuff. And it's a sort of breaking down of barriers. I mean, there's a book in 1598 by Thomas Morley, the plain and easy introduction to the, to the art of music. And. My goodness, is it, you know, it's such a snobbish, exclusionary thing. And then, you know, by the 1650s, we're talking about England, you've got Playford writing, you know, writing very simple books saying kind of basically music for dummies. So instead of this huge manual, just so long as you know these things, you'll be able to get away with it. Halfway through the 1600s, the violin gains momentum and kind of takes off in Europe. Even though, around Amati, instrument makers were dropping like flies, and he appears to be the only one left in his neighborhood. The rest of Europe is producing instruments in a big way, and the violin was coming into its own as a solo instrument. There was always a demand for the violin to accompany dancing, and this conveniently sized instrument that was somewhat easier to tune than the viol family was coming in handy. If you're in the Renaissance, you're a humanist, you're looking at how you display your virtue. And ultimately, that's by, you know, what you're able to perform. And the lute is of, is very interesting for certain reasons, because of its precision. It's almost as the closest thing to universal harmony. And that makes it very important. Because every note is about, it's precise. So you, you put your note behind your mathematically created fret, and then you play a note where, because it's plucked, it stays, it's very pure. So it's as close to this kind of mathematical, universal harmony as it can be. The viol. with the way that that's bowed is actually closest to the human voice. So it's actually kind of an extension of your soul. Now there's a, there's an archbishop in Ireland, Narcissus Marsh, and he writes about, you know, Lord beseech me for loss of time in vain conversation, when he's talking about his viol playing when he was, Procrastinating from stopping people from killing each other. He is expressing that thing about the vial being some kind of utterly connected to his soul. Uh, dancing is another virtue as we know, and, but you can't do dancing without music, so the violin has always provided the dance music. Then the interesting thing is, is that the better the dance music, the higher the, yeah, the better the dancing will be, so in terms of your virtue, your virtue will be higher by the better dancing you do, so actually employing the, we actually get to a point where the Dancing Master Violinist In the French court and simultaneously in the English court. At the time that James, I is looking for a, for a marriage for his son, you know, is actually the person who brokers the royal marriage, uh, and is paid hundreds of gold coins for doing it. Because, because actually as that professional violinist, you know, he is of such high virtue that the dance, which is performed above that is yet of higher virtue. So. So a violinist can never be the endpoint of virtue, ever, but there's always someone more virtuous than a violinist. By being the greatest musician that there is, that's the measure of, of, of the virtue of the dance which their, their music gives. So when we see this thing of, they were just lowly professional musicians, it's like, yes, but on the other hand, there's a whole other side to this. And, and over and over again, we see the extraordinary status in the English court, uh, violinists, you know, who are servants of the court. They're, they're not noblemen, they're not aristocrats, and they're certainly not princes and all servants have their place. And what, The marking between a servant and a nobleman is that the noblemen, the courtiers, they wear swords. And the musicians, who are Paid as servants, wear swords as noblemen. Yeah, that, that mustn't have been comfortable to play with you. It makes, yeah, I mean, you know. Excuse me. No, just, I'm just sitting. No, yeah, just don't mind the sword. I mean, I've had bows in my face as a musician. I've had elbows in my face. Having, having swords is a problem. It's Man, yeah, we don't realize the, the problems, the logistics that they had to go through with that. Um, yeah. And also, um, the dance masters, they were like, they were musicians. They were, you were, you're a dancer. Often you're a fencer. You, uh, had to be a good horseback rider. It was, it was a, it was a whole gig. Yeah. Um, I mean, you can't, you can't simply be good and virtuous at one thing. You have, in order to be virtuous at one thing, you have to be virtuous at all things. So, you know that, that idea of. Absolute specialism. You couldn't begin to specialize in one thing unless you were a master of many things. Then in 1640, 10 years after the plague had transformed Nicolo Amati’s life, he decided to invest money in a piece of land outside Cremona. Unfortunately, and somewhat predictably, shortly after the purchase, a military campaign led by the Duke of Mantua saw an army trample through his land as only an army can and destroy everything, including the farm. This was a disaster. He would be paying off the debt for the next 41 years. In 1641, Nicolo is now in his early 40s and a successful businessman, but he still has no children of his own to inherit the family business and continue the craft. In the workshop, he desperately needs help, and so for the first time, he breaks with tradition and looks for extra hands outside the family. Yes, he does. So a year after having his land flattened by the Mantuan Duke, we find Nicolo Amati living with his sister, Elisabetta His niece, Angela, 31. And his two teenage assistants. Their names are Giacomo Gennaro, who is 17 years old, and Andrea Guarneri, who is 15. From now on, Niccolo's workshop would always have help from outside the family. He was making more and more violins and other instruments from the violin family. He was using his grand pattern model on and off during this time, experimenting with different shapes and sizes, outlines and archings. The decision to take on apprentices from outside the family would have a profound effect on violin making in Cremona. It would take it from being a one shop town to a hub of instrument making. Niccolo gets over the plague, takes on apprentices, not family members because that never seems to work out, and then we start getting more and more skilled artisans and this thing grows and grows. And within 30 years you get to a point where he's taking on apprentices. where every city in Italy has got violin makers, every major city in Europe has got violin makers, and the violin has transformed, partially because covered strings have made it so much easier to play, partly because of the repertoire that's already been growing for it, which, to a point where, You know, by the time you get to 1660, it is, you know, the king of instruments. It's, it's, it's something that everyone's playing. And that's happened, you know, within a lifetime, this thing's transformed into its popularity. This is a time when Royal courts were competing to have the best orchestras and violinists were being passed around the courts like footballers today in clubs. So with Niccolò Martí, you know, he's the first to take on apprentices. We've had a long, uh, But the Ruggeri family, the Guarneri family, they're all, well the Guarneri family are certainly apprentices. Quite what the Ruggeri family are doing, they're not, they're a local family. And it might just be that they didn't have to live in the same house as him. You know, why would they be on the census if they're doing that? And a whole load of other people seem to be coming in and out as apprentices who are not really, you know, very significant makers. We know that Niccolo had all of these apprentices because of the parish records made by the parish priests every year when they went from house to house filling out their census. So, for example, we have records of people living in Amarty's home and working for him, but if If someone was a local, they would not be on the census paper because they would be living in their own home. So for this reason, there is some doubt as to a few names of those who were his apprentices, and one of those being a local boy called Antonio Storivari. Possibly there, you know, there's Bartolomeo Cristofori, he comes over from Florence and he's mostly a harpsichord maker. He invents the piano and there's a few double basses that he made, but maybe spending six months in the Amati workshop were kind of useful, particularly if he was supposed to be looking after the Amatis in the Medici courts. So there's all sorts of things happening, but with all these apprentices that we don't really know about, they're actually people going out to different parts of Italy and the world. They're coming out, marketing, essentially, helping people to understand the importance of what the Amati workshop is, keeping the Amati tradition at the top, and really allowing for, for prices. In 1685, a year actually after Niccolo dies, there's a, uh, Vitali workshop. The composer has a, has a lawsuit against somebody who has bought a violin for because he thought that he bought a Niccolo Marti but there happens to be another label in it and it's actually by Ruggeri and he says, you know, I bought this and an Amati is supposed to be worth 12 pistolas and it's just a Ruggeri and they're only worth four pistolas and he wanted, you know, he wanted the difference back and we can look at that. Was that straightforward fraud? Was that Amati who, he had a full load of books? He could say, it was from the workshop, I didn't say who made it, I said it was from the Amati workshop. Exactly, he might have had a full order book, he might have sold it for four pistolas in the first place. There's so many things, I mean, everyone writing about violin fraud has started with that as the outset. So here we have it, the beginning of a boom. Although Niccolò had a painful past to contest with, he appears to be going full steam ahead with his many apprentices. The most enduring of whom is the young, fresh faced Andrea Guarneri, who will stay with Niccolò through thick and thin. Now, I hear you say, Guarneri? But which Guarneri? Exactly. Well, the Guarneri family of violin makers are a story all in themselves. The lives of the Guarneri's, the Ruggeri's, the Amarti's and the Stradivari's are all going to start overlapping very soon. So hold on to your seat and stay tuned for the next episodes. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, we have some wonderful Patreons supporting the podcast. And if you would like to join them, simply go now to patreon. com forward slash the violin chronicles, and you can sign up there. As a Patreon, not only will you have a warm, fuzzy feeling in the knowledge that you're helping to make things happen, but you will also have access to bonus episodes. We have a series of episodes on Patreon called My Encyclopedia of Luthiers, in which my husband, Antoine, and I recap episodes. Each maker in under an hour, and we look briefly at their life and career and discuss all the characteristics of that particular luthier so that you have a checklist to start you on your journey to being an expert, or at least being able to tell a Da Salo from an Andrea if you have a chance to pick them up and look at them. I have also posted other extra episodes that you can check out as well. If you want to peruse the page. Now, I would like to say a big thank you to my guests, Benjamin Hebbert and Emily Brayshaw for joining me today. And if you liked this show, please rate and give it a review. That is in fact very helpful, but for now, thank you for joining me and until next time on the Violin Chronicles. ​