Hand-built violins and cellos in the tradition of the old Italian masters, and a workshop devoted to bringing tired, broken instruments back to life — under the heritage of Baltersan Castle, a 16th-century tower house in the lands of Carrick, where stone has stood since 1584.
The first instrument of the long return: a full-size cello begun in 2013 and completed in 2015. Two years of evenings and weekends — a learning ground, a re-acquaintance with the bench, a quiet conversation with the wood.
The body closed and assembled but unvarnished — bare wood, unstrung, sitting by the fireplace at home. Photographed before the long, slow business of varnishing began.
Two years on, in a warm red-amber varnish drawn from natural resins, strung and singing for the first time. A learning piece — and, in the way these things go, the one that confirmed the direction of everything that came after.
The Maidenhead does not live here any longer. It was donated to a young cellist studying at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia in Rome — a student who needed an instrument and could not have bought one. An instrument is only finished when somebody is playing it.
The story is an old one with a long pause in the middle. The first chisels and gouges came in Pisa in the 1990s, training under Maestro Claudio Rampini — whose Portale del Violino has been a touchstone of the Italian school of lutherie for two decades. Then came a long career in information technology, a different kind of craft, with its own precision and its own logic.
After many years away from the bench, the wood called back. In the years since, I have returned to the trade — first quietly, in spare rooms and stolen weekends, refining technique on my own; and now, under the heritage of Baltersan, as a continuous practice. The decades between were not a detour. The patience that engineering teaches turns out to be exactly the patience an instrument asks for.
Every violin that leaves this bench begins its life as silent timber — Alpine spruce for the belly, flamed European maple for the back, ribs and scroll. The methods are those learned in Pisa and carried forward: planing, arching, voicing, graduating the plates by ear and candle-light until the wood remembers how to sing. There are no shortcuts here, and there were never meant to be.
"The name of the Lord is a strong tower" — inscribed above the door of Baltersan in 1584. The same patience that raised those walls raises an instrument.
The atelier takes its name and its spirit from Baltersan Castle, an L-plan tower house in the hills of Carrick, near Maybole, begun on the first day of March 1584 by John Kennedy of Pennyglen and his wife Margaret Cathcart. Today the castle is being restored as a cultural centre and music school — and this workshop is part of that long, slow restoration of a Scottish musical tradition.
I am the Laird of Baltersan, which is to say I hold the tower house and the land around it. The castle is being rebuilt slowly and properly: masons in the summer, dry winters for setting stone, the gardens and orchards cleared back to the lines they once held. Lutherie is not an aside from that work but a part of it. The bench keeps the workshop running, the workshop keeps the walls rising, and the walls — when they are finished — will hold instruments like these in the hands of young players who would never otherwise hold one. The order matters. None of it works alone.
Alongside the bench at Baltersan, a small laboratory sits in Holywell, Flintshire, in North Wales — a quieter space for testing, refinement, and the long, patient experiments that eventually become method. Two benches, the same hands.
All things change — nothing perishes.
Each instrument is signed, numbered, and dated by hand. Each is intended to outlive the maker by three centuries.
"A stately, fine house with gardens, orchards and parks around it." — Rev. William Abercrombie, Description of Carrick · 1696
There is a particular kind of instrument I cannot leave alone — the broken one nobody thinks is worth saving.
Violins and cellos arrive at the workshop in all conditions: cracked tops, sunken arches, opened seams, neck breaks, peeling varnish, missing pieces. Some are factory instruments treated as disposable; many are older British or European school violins with unknown histories. Most have been written off elsewhere as not worth the labour. I take them on. The work is slow — sometimes months, sometimes more — but the same patience that goes into a new instrument goes into the rescue of an old one.
A John G. Murdoch & Co. Maidstone violin, London, c.1900 — opened on the bench for restoration. The photograph looks down into the inside of the back, with the original oval paper label still in place at the centre. These instruments were built for the Maidstone Movement: an 1897 initiative that, at its height, put violins into the hands of more than 400,000 British schoolchildren from low-income families. By 1909, one in ten state-school pupils in Britain played one of these.
Restoring a Maidstone is, in a small way, a continuation of its first purpose. When this one is finished, it will go to a young player who needs a violin — exactly as it was meant to, 125 years ago.
This violin arrived in poor condition — an interesting old piece dating from the early 1800s, almost certainly of Austrian origin. The body is intact and worth saving, but the harmonic table — the top plate — has presented the trickiest of the work: cracks, sunken arching, and decades of well-meant repairs to undo before the plate can speak again. Here, fresh spruce is being offered up alongside the dark old varnish of the original body — two generations of timber meeting on the bench.
The aim is never to make new wood pretend to be old, but to let the instrument find its voice again — honestly, and for many years to come.
Many of these restored instruments find their way back to players at modest cost — listed on our eBay shop and through online stores — and a number are given outright to students who would otherwise have no way of owning one. The mission is the same as Murdoch's was in 1897: good instruments — handmade, not mass-produced — placed in the hands of the people who most want to play them.
If you have an old violin or cello in an attic, a wardrobe, or under a bed — and you have wondered whether it could ever play again — please write. I would like to see it.
A bespoke violin or violoncello takes between nine and eighteen months to complete. The waiting list is intentionally short. Each commission begins with a conversation.
Each instrument is priced for players, not collectors — well below what the bench could ask, but enough to keep the work honest. What remains after the cost of making and running the workshop goes in full to the ongoing restoration and management of Baltersan Castle.
An hour or two — by letter, telephone, or here at the bench. We discuss your playing, the repertoire you live in, the sound you hear in your head. Pattern, varnish, and proportions are agreed.
Week 1 — 3Selecting the timber: Alpine spruce aged a decade or more, flamed maple from the old European stocks. The wood is tapped, weighed, and matched by ear before a single cut.
Month 1 — 2Hand-arching of the plates, ribs, scroll, and neck. Graduations are taken by candle and tap-tone. The instrument is assembled in white, then voiced in the raw before varnish.
Month 3 — 9An oil varnish, ground from natural resins and sun-coloured over weeks. Twelve to fifteen coats, hand-rubbed between each, until the wood is sealed and lit from within.
Month 9 — 14Fitting the bridge, soundpost, pegs, and strings to your hand and ear. The violin is delivered with a written certificate and accompanied through its first six months of play.
Month 15 — 18For commissions, repairs, valuations, or to arrange a visit to try one of the available instruments — please use the form, or write directly.