Even on a dreary Melbourne afternoon, the light streams into the north-facing violin workshop bearing Martin Paul’s name.
If you peer into the storefront, you’ll find an ode to the beauty of violins.
“There’s often people wandering past and most people have a glance in because you don’t often walk past a violin shop,” Paul says.
Inside, rows of glossy violins hang from racks above the workshop space, which Paul jokes is “many years of work”. Cellos rest along the walls, while on the workshop bench, hand tools are lined up in a neat row.
Paul is a luthier – a maker and repairer of stringed instruments – and the owner of Martin Paul Fine Instruments in West Melbourne. The store specialises in repairing and restoring violins, violas, cellos and their bows, and also sells instruments.
Most of the instruments, some up to 300 years old, are European and British makes. Older instruments often require a more delicate touch, with their varnish more aged.
But Paul explains that each instrument requires a different approach, and his philosophy is to “always respond to what the instrument is doing with your hands”.
All instruments have their own distinct personality, Paul says.
“Yes, it’s a violin and it sounds like a violin – but then you play it next to another one and they sound quite different. Or when you hold them there are small differences, like their shapes, the different curves they [the makers] have used, and the colours in them through the layers of varnish,” he says.
“The personality is a mixture of all of these things that the maker has done and the life that it’s had as well.”
Paul comes from generations of musicians – his mother and grandfather were violinists – and he began playing the violin at the age of five.
He bought the store – previously named the Violineri – five years ago from the previous owner, Brenton Fyfield, who established it in the mid-1980s in Camberwell, in Melbourne’s inner-east.
‘Old school apprenticeship’
In Australia, there are no institutional training pathways to become a luthier specialising in violins, leaving people to learn under direct mentorship or head overseas.
So, while studying music performance at Monash University, he began working part-time in Fyfield’s store.
At first, he learned the basics of simple repair work.
“I started out watching the repairs happen on the bench and then starting to get an idea of how it all worked,” he recalls.
Paul remembers observing Fyfields’ delicate work on the bench.
“[I was] seeing that and starting to take the first baby steps on how to cut and carve and shape and do things,” he says.
“The use of the hand tools is really a lovely thing and wood itself is a really nice thing to work with. It’s pleasing to cut and shape. It’s a really tactile experience.”
A year later, he travelled to the UK to learn specialist restoration methods under luthier John Gosling which he describes as an “old school apprenticeship”.
Paul, who is still in contact with his mentor, hopes he can pass on the tradition to his own apprentice one day.
“It would be nice to experience from the other side and see someone else carry on and step up and go well,” he says.
The tactile nature of the craft was distinct to Paul’s academic music education.
“As a kid I wasn’t someone who was building wooden things all the time or anything. I would be playing the instrument, but not [with] that kind of physical connection with materials,” he says.
“It’s a different side to the playing side.”
But the precision of classical music translated seamlessly.
‘The curiosity of how they will sound’
His work is mainly done with hand tools, although Paul will use a bandsaw to cut down larger pieces of wood.
A repair will often begin with Paul playing the instrument.
“For me there is always the curiosity of how they will sound,” he says.
“Then I look at the things that I would be changing to make it sound better. That’s always the aim of the game.”
A conservative approach is at the heart of all repair and restoration work – aiming to keep as much intact of the original maker’s work of the instrument as possible.
“It’s kind of … like conservators in museums [who] would be thinking the same way about maintaining an object and trying to keep it original,” he says.
“There’s always a balance to strike between what you do to make it functional for a player to play all day every day and keeping it as an original, antique instrument.”
Common repairs can include fixing a crack in a violin’s top plate or creating a new bridge – the narrow piece of wood that supports the instrument’s strings. If a violin has been left to languish for years, restoration work can take months.
Professional musicians and students make up the shop’s customer base, but there are also those with a violin that has been stored away for years, with the hope it can be revived and made playable.
“There’s a really nice social aspect of it when someone has a grandparent’s instrument and now they have another person who’s looking to play it in the family,” Paul says.
“When they come in to pick it up and it’s playable and then either I play it for them or someone in the family plays it and it’s the first time they’ve heard it in many years, it’s a really lovely thing. It’s nice to be part of that.”
