Benefield: Santa Rosa luthier makes locally sourced, handcrafted violin hoping for a global impact

It was a reunion of sorts at the Oberlin Violin Makers Workshop last week as the majority of international violin makers behind the “Violinabox” project got to reunite with their creation.

“It’s the group, minus 3,” project creator and Santa Rosa luthier Andrew Carruthers said.

All together and under one roof for the first time in a year, that smaller group got to see their masterful creation in person — hold it in their hands, rest their chin upon its wood, hear the sounds that emerged from its eclectically created body.

It is a violin crafted by 10 different makers, built sequentially, and shipped around the globe from work studio to work studio.

“Everyone was happy to see it,” Carruthers said from Oberlin, Ohio. “I think we are all pretty pleased with it. It’s slightly unusual looking.”

Which makes sense, because Violinabox was an unusual undertaking.

The brainchild of master luthier Carruthers, the project aimed to build a single instrument from many hands.

Just two years ago, Carruthers undertook the Redwood Violin project in which he made a violin by carving, gluing and varnishing the instrument with materials sourced within 30 miles of his studio.

This time, he kept the focus on locally sourced materials but let that idea spread its wings to the far corners of the globe.

Carruthers, along with like-minded craftspeople from around the world, mapped out a plan for individual makers to build the violin sequentially. At each step, participants would add their part then ship the as-yet-incomplete instrument to the next stop.

The instrument was crafted in Canada, the U.S., Italy, Switzerland, London, Israel, Australia and elsewhere. It’s traveled nearly 15,000 miles.

An additional piece of the puzzle? Participants were directed to seek out and use locally-sourced materials.

“It was a little bit of a test of your understanding of how traditional materials work,” Carruthers said. “You basically had to go out and look for substitutions that work as well as possible.”

Oh, the other criteria?

“It should be fun,” Carruthers said.

To that end, his own work on his piece of the violin was decidedly old school.

Carruthers was in charge of the fingerboard and the purflings.

What’s a purfling, you ask? Yeah, me too.

A purfling is a thin, decorative edge inlaid into the top plate and back plate of the violin. It’s for looks, yes, but it also holds the instrument together and prevents cracks.

“It accents the outline so that you can see it better, but it also has a rather nice functional aspect to it,” he said. “The top tends to get cracked and the inlay ties the edge together.”

To dye the purfling for this piece, Carruthers created a dye solution out of water, a splash of vinegar and rusty nails. When that mixture was just so, he mixed it in with boiled acorn water.

Into this potion went the purflings to soak.

“It wasn’t just to make it more difficult. Acorns are rich in tannins,” he said.

For the fingerboard, Carruthers normally would have used ebony. But for this piece, he sought out something different.

“The wood is normally ebony, a very dense and hard wood. It resists the fingering and stuff,” he said. “It’s one of the hardest woods on the planet, so finding something approaching that was difficult.”

He landed on a piece of wood from a felled Pacific madrone burned in the 2020 Glass fire.

Carruthers was drawn to the story behind other participants’ contributions.

One craftsman who made the top plate found his wood from a Canadian milling operation that specializes in logs retrieved from spills by the British Navy 200 years ago into the Ottawa River in Quebec.

He chose his wood from a spruce log.

The varnish for the violin was made from sap trees in England’s Sherwood Forest, Carruthers said.

Everything about this project feels homemade. Including the name.

With so many international craftspeople in on the making of this unique instrument, there was a misspelling, perhaps a mispronunciation, at the genesis of discussions so “violin in a box” became “violinabox.”

It stuck.

At each phase, artisans were asked to record their work and keep followers updated on Instagram and other social media platforms.

It was that piece, not the creation of the instrument itself, that has proven trickiest and most time-consuming, Carruthers said.

“Some people are shy about being on video,” he said. “Reporting on it got a bit laggy because some of us are not very internet savvy.”

Today, five of the 10 makers have contributed video clips of their portion of the project.

There are more installments to come, but on Instagram today, it appears as if the violin is in Gianmaria Stelzer’s workshop in Zurich.

In fact, the completed instrument has since begun Phase 2 of Carruthers’ vision: Making its way around the globe to be played by musicians in every corner of earth.

It’s been in Mexico.

It’s been in Santa Rosa in the hands of Henry Miller, 13, the young phenom and concert master for the Santa Rosa Symphony Youth Orchestra.

And it’s now in Oberlin, Ohio, with its makers.

Carruthers is OK with the actual violin being a little bit out of tune with the social media updates chronicling of the project.

He just wants to keep the momentum behind the instrument going.

“I didn’t want to wait a year before we started playing it,” he said.

So now he’s in search of musicians, talented folks who will appreciate what has gone into the making of the violin, to play on it, to record with it and to embrace it.

He sees it as a potential tool to raise funds for music programs or awareness for youth orchestras. He wants this violin of many makers to help draw attention to worthy musical causes.

It’s a unique instrument, with a unique story and Carruthers envisions it doing some good in the world.

If the social media accounts catch fire, and followers are interested to see where the violin shows up next and who gets a chance to play on it, it could be a fundraising tool for orchestras or just something to raise awareness of the binding power of music, he said.

“It could have some weight to do charitable things,” he said. “Somebody might say, ‘Can you bring the violin to us, we are trying to bring a youth orchestra here.’ It could have some weight and do some good.”

Truth be told, Carruthers would like to have the violin take on a life of its own.

“I would like it if it would keep going over the years.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.