Gaspar Borchardt Violin, 2008, Cremona, ITALY | Metzler Violins

resonant, warm, full

About the Instrument
This violin has a particularly powerful and supple lower register. It is lovingly antiqued with a russet varnish over a pale golden ground. Its spruce front plate bears a wider grain while the two-piece back has flaming extending from the center joint. Similar flames run along the instrument’s ribs. The neck and scroll are of a relatively plain wood.

Interior label reads:  “Gaspar Borchardt / fece in Cremona / in Piazzo Duomo - Anno 2008.”
Length: 355 mm
Upper Bouts: 167 mm
Middle: 111 mm 
Lower Bouts: 206 mm

About the Maker
Gaspar Borchardt (1961- ) was born in Germany. In his early twenties, he moved to Cremona to study at the Scuola di Liuteria, working closely with Alessandro Crillovi and Francesco Bissolotti. Since 1990, Borchardt has worked with his wife Sibylle Fehr in their workshop in Cremona. Borchardt’s instruments adhere to the traditional Cremonese methods of construction employed since Stradivari while using his own cultivated patterns. Known for refined instruments and using excellent and long-seasoned tonewoods, Borchardt often tests his instruments’ sound when they are “white” (unvarnished), as it is still possible to complete some technical changes at that stage for better acoustics. In 2015, Borchardt strove to find the same wood types used in Stradivari’s shop: flame maples in the Bosnian forest, some two-to-three centuries old, and cut during the winter (when the tree is lightest). These efforts are in the documentary “The Quest for Tonewood,” which shows the many complications of Borchardt’s efforts, including the landmines still present throughout the Bosnian countryside after the war in the 1990s.