Making A Violin: The label is in

fiddle harmonic boxThe harmonic box is done.  The front and back glued together, and inside is the label with my fiddle’s name, “Chanson Epinette”,  Spruce Song in French.  And then my name, Marcy Luikart and the botton line, Santa Barbara, California 2015.  A label to establish the provenance when a few hundred years from now someone finds it in a pawn shop, or at a garage sale, if people still have garages in a few hundred years. and they will peer inside the F hole and the faded letters will tell them where and when it was created. And someone will wonder who this Marcy Luikart was and it will be a rare and unusual find, this fiddle from the early 21st century.  And maybe someone will wonder about why there are no other instruments by this obscure craftsperson and there will be nothing to confirm or deny that there was only one, except these blogs which will have long since faded into the infinity of zeros and ones. But I get ahead of myself.  It has been a year since I began this process.  Four months on the practice back to learn some of the tool skills and nine months with the real instrument.  Brian thinks I will be done in June.  That is my goal, to have my finished instrument to bring with me to the Live Oak Music Festival.  I have to be careful and not be a mother hen about this.  This is going to be my instrument.  It will come with me to music festivals and camping trips.  It will not be something to hide away and only play in the safety of my home with the perfect humidity and coolness.  It will breathe in the air like it did when the wood stood in the forests of Europe and birds nested on it’s branches and insects crawled on the bark. I am thinking about who I can get to play it when it’s finished. Someone other than me, someone who can plumb the depth of it’s sound.  But I have time, six months.  And still so much to do, the scroll, the neck, the varnish, the bridge, the sound post.  So many details.  My mind explodes with the precision of it, but I am on the end of the journey.  The label is in.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *