“How would you define the smell of a violin-making workshop?” asks Joffrey Waltz of his colleague Anne Gouriano, working on a double-bass on the opposite side of their craft shop.
“Unique,” she laughs.
It is the heady mix of turpentine, wood, spruce bark, colophony (rosin) and linseed oil that makes Du Bois à la Musique in Nice such a memorable place to visit.
They bought the shop in 2017 from violin maker Pierre Allain.
“My job is to adapt a piece of wood to an instrument and make the most of it,” says Mr Waltz. Which sounds easy enough. Except it most definitely is not.
You need three to four years of training before you can be considered a beginner luthier, says Mr Waltz. It would be foolhardy to leave five to six-figure instruments in a newbie's hands.
Violins are lined up everywhere. Many are yet to be restored, patiently waiting in their cabinets with labels, while a few are ready for their owners to pick up.
“The most dangerous jobs are when people do not give a set date, and just say “whenever you can,” says Ms Gouriano. “That’s usually when I get concerned, because they’re probably going to be the one calling five days later asking how far I’ve progressed!”
Roughly 95% of the job is repairing stringed instruments – violins and cellos for the main part. The causes for renovation include accidents, wear and tear or temperature variations.
The remaining 5% is about creating made-to-measure instruments for professional musicians, tailored to their individual style of playing.
“Planing is what we do, mostly,” says Mr Waltz, which means going back and forth on the fingerboard of a worn-out violin. This particular one was left by a gentleman who developed a newfound interest for violins after his daughter started to play the instrument.
Luthier Joffrey Waltz in the workshop in NiceThéophile Larcher
Pinned to the walls facing Mr Waltz’ desk are all his tools, two of which are unique to his craft.
First are the canifs, knives in English, with blades and grips of various sizes and for specific parts of a violin.
They allow Mr Waltz to access the narrowest spaces. The canif à chevalet, for instance, is used to curve the F-holes.
A thin rod, called a pointe aux âmes in French, is specifically designed to work on the sound post within the violin (a piece of wood which gives the instrument its unique sound – more poetically, its âme or soul).
Violin-making background
Mr Waltz developed an interest in violin-making after learning to play the cello aged eight.
He graduated from Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume in Mirecourt, a small town in Vosges and something of a hotspot for stringed instrument makers since the 17th century.
He then worked in Paris at the Bernard Sabatier violin-maker’s shop in Rue de Rome, the historic craft shop street.
Similarly, Ms Gouriano learned to play the violin, viola and harp at age six and trained at the Ecole Internationale de Lutherie Jean-Jacques Pagès, 600m and two streets away in Mirecourt. She also worked in Paris, at Atelier Charton.
Both did internships at Allain et Gasq Luthier Archetier, the Nice workshop they ended up buying.
Being able to play a stringed instrument is not necessary, but is recommended, says Mr Waltz. It helps in understanding the thought processes of players.
Two unique tools are part of a luthier's toolboxThéophile Larcher
In fact, all violin-makers should be taught psychology lessons during their formative years, he quips, because some clients – professional players mainly – can be tricky to handle.
Mr Waltz and Ms Gouriano do not just play the violin, but also play with expressions inspired by it.
‘To play second fiddle’ is used in French too, but not all anglophones will have heard of le violon d'Ingres to denote a hobby – a reference to the fact that the French neoclassical painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres used to play the violin when he was not working.
Resins and oils are neededThéophile Larcher
More memorable is the phrase 'pisser dans un violon' to describe doing something pointless.
It dates back to 1860 but French people used to say 'souffler dans un violon' back then because blowing in a stringed instrument in the hope of getting the same sound as a wind instrument is…
“...completely useless,” laughs Waltz, finishing my sentence.
