Andrew Carruthers
I am a violin maker living in Northern California. This site is a showcase for my work and a place to share the experience of practicing an eighteenth-century craft in the twenty-first century.
A native of Oxfordshire, England, I worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Research Labs in California before deciding to follow my passion for building stringed instruments. Returning to the UK, I studied at the Welsh School of Violin Making and Repair, near Cardiff. After graduating I joined the restoration workshops of Bein and Fushi in Chicago to apprentice under the guidance of master cello restorer, Russell Wagner. In 1996 I opened my own workshop in Santa Rosa, California, providing restoration services to the violin trade. Regular clients included some of the world’s leading violin dealers. Since 2015 all of my work has been devoted to building new instruments for clients across the US and in Europe.
My particular pleasure in violin making is exploring the tonal possibilities of mixing different woods with different instrument models.
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