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By the representative from The Swedish violin- & bow makers association; Tommy Jakobsson.

I would like to start with a brief presentation on the history of Swedish violin making.

There are no records of any violin makers in Sweden before 1650 and there is very little information left about these early makers. Most of them were probably located in Stockholm, the capitol, which around 1720 had about 45.000 citizens. Customers were the musicians of the royal court, church orchestras and wealthy citizens.

The first concert open to a regular public took place in 1731, and it's around this time the musical life is starting to take the shape as we recognize it today.

In other words, when the art of violin making was on its way to reach its highest level in Cremona, it was still in the cradle in this country way up north.

The Swedish violin makers of this time could by no means satisfy the demands for new instruments, so the majority of the instruments used were imported.

With the demand so big, one could easily be lead to believe that the violin makers craft was a prosperous one at this time, but sadly, not so. Almost all violin makers, well and lesser known, seems to have had a terrible time to make a decent living. Much like today... It's a small wonder that the craft survived at all.

Anyway, if we make a leap in time to the 20ieth century, the situation is more or less the same.

1900-2000

We have a very small number of professional violin makers located in the largest cities, leaving the major part of the country without the benefits of professional help, especially with regards to repair and maintenance of instruments. Since the demands for repair work was there, and no one to fulfil them, many musicians had no choice but to present their problems to the local carpenter, cabinet maker or maybe to the woodworking teacher of the village school.

I think this is one of the reasons that Sweden probably have more amateur violin makers than any other country in the world and this brings us up to the present time.

The definition of the word "amateur" is one who loves what he is doing, and there are many truly outstanding amateur violin makers in Sweden today, but there are also some terrible dilettantes lurking to prey on whatever they can get their hands on.

Many are the horror tales of how fine old instruments have been left in the hands of self righteous repairmen, only to be returned to the owner butchered beyond all reason. Sometimes completely revarnished and the strange thing is that there seems to be no end to it, history is repeating itself over and over again. It is like there is something about the magic in the violin world that really gets to the head of some people, totally depriving them of common sense.

n Sweden today, there are an ever increasing number of high class old instruments, belonging to foundations and orchestras as well as individual musicians. With the tremendous increase in value of these instruments the demand for some way to regulate who is suited to work on them becomes apparent.

This was one of the reasons that in October 2002 a group of professional violin and bow makers gathered to found The Swedish Violin- and Bow makers Association.

This is the first organization of its kind in Sweden ever, and

Our main objectives are to:

To qualify as a member

This is a lengthy process to assure that once you are accepted as a member, your customers can be certain that you possess ample skills as a maker

SVSF, which is short for Swedish Violin- & Bow makers Association. - doesn't make any sense when translated to English though, was the result of a process that started in 1998, with activities organized by Peter and Irene Westerlund, Westerlunds Violinverkstad AB, designed to raise the skill level of the Swedish makers - as well as bringing them closer together. Read more about the weekend courses on Westerlunds Violinverkstad AB:s homepage.

The means for this was arranging weekend courses twice a year, with invited successful makers as lecturers. The first day always ended with a three course dinner in a fashionable restaurant. The dinner was included in the course fee so everyone came, and at a very affordable price too.

These gatherings really made everything possible, because no one in the business could afford not to come, even though many had to travel far to get to Stockholm where the meetings took place.

We have had makers from Denmark, Norway and Iceland present at these occasions as well.

Maybe not very surprising when you look at the list of lecturers over the years:

The organization is totally independent, and is financed by the members.

For now, there are 19 members.

There's one more thing to be said about the current situation in Sweden:

These meetings gave the makers the opportunity to discuss an eventual professional organization, and the process was very near a completion when sadly enough, a group of makers halted it all by demanding that the organization should be for violin making MASTERS only.

The official reason for this was concerns about the quality of repair work performed. The hidden agenda was of course to try to reserve a profitable part of the market for them selves. This is a serious step backwards in the eyes of our organization.

The main reason is that the Swedish master diploma is a merit on paper only. It's received after an administrative process. Our standpoint is that it is no one's business how you develop your skills, as long as you have them. However, our organization will strive to merge these two organizations into one as soon as possible.

We believe that it is in the best interest of the craft to promote openness and cooperation, and this in turns gives you many more options to work in the best interest of your customer.

I would like to end with expressing our gratitude from the Swedish violin- and bow makers association for being given the opportunity to participate in this event. Being such a newly founded organization it is of course of a tremendous value to be able to meet other makers and representatives from so many other countries in Europe.

Thank you.

Our web site www.svsf.se is currently only available in a Swedish version.

After this international debut of course there will be an English version up soon.

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