Ep 21. Francesco Rugeri Part 3

Join me as we continue to look at the life of this innovative violin maker who was literally living outside the box. His workshop has been successfully set up, he has a young family and work is pouring in. Francesco now has to take on apprentices but who could they be? Keep listening to find out. 

Transcript

  Hello and welcome to the Violin Chronicles, a podcast in which I, Linda Lespets, will attempt to bring to life the story surrounding famous, infamous, or just not very well known, but interesting, violin makers of history.  I'm a violin maker and restorer. I graduated from the French Violin Making School some years ago now and I currently live and work in Sydney with my husband Antoine, who is also a violin maker and graduate of the French school, l'Ecole Nationale de Luthierie in Mirecourt. As well as being a luthier I've always been intrigued with the history of instruments I work with and in particular the lives of those who made them.  So often when we look back at history I know that I have a tendency to look at just one aspect. But here my aim is to join up the puzzle pieces and have a look at an altogether fascinating picture.

So join me as I wade through tales not only of fame, feminine war, but also of love. Artistic genius. Revolutionary craftsmanship, determination, cunning, and bravery that all have their part to play in the history of the violin.

 This week's show is sponsored by Tarizio Fine Instruments and Bows, and I just happen to have bumped into Mr.Jason Price.

Hello, I'm Jason Price. I'm the founder and director of Tarizio, Tarizio was started 25 years ago in New York City, and now we have offices in London and also Berlin. We do auctions, we do private sales, and we also are the maintainers and curators of this thing called the Cozio Archive.

I just wanted to say from personal experience as a violin maker, over the years we've bought instruments from different auction houses and you guys have been very straightforward to work with and

I'm happy to hear that.

And I'm not going to say that everything is perfect for everyone, but us personally,

of course, of course, of course,

We have never had a problem with you guys.

And we're happy to hear it.

So it's just been a pleasure working with you.

You know, we work really hard to make sure that our attributions are correct, that our condition reports are 100 percent accurate, and that what we're selling is reliable. 

Say I'm a musician and I'm looking for an instrument and I come to you, how does that process work?

Well, Our brick and mortar offices are in New York, London, and Berlin, and we put together three auctions a year in each of those locations, so that's nine auctions total, and we invite the public in for a full month before each auction. And we encourage you to bring your friend, your teacher, your standmate, your grandmother, anybody who can help you make a good decision, and we want you to spend as long as you can getting to know these instruments.

For people who listen to this podcast, something that you might be thinking when you're, when you're listening to me telling the stories of violin makers is you would really love to see pictures of the instruments that they make. And for that, you have the perfect resource. 

The Cosio Archive. We now own it, maintain it, and are continually adding to it. It's an incredible amount of instruments. Over 100, 000 instruments in the database.  Over 4, 000 makers, which we are following and tracking. 200, 000 auction prices. An incredible number of photographs. It's really quite cool to have access to all these photos.

What's the process to subscribe? The annual subscription is a hundred dollars and allows you unlimited access to as many makers and as many instruments as you want.

So there you have it. If you would like to subscribe to the Cosio Archive, read a Cartegio article or browse the auction catalogue, go to Tarizio.com. And now back to the show.

Welcome back to this series on Francesco Ruggeri. We find ourselves in Cremona, a city in Northern Italy on the Lombard plains. Yet this relatively small centre had a far reaching reputation for the production of fine instruments in many European cities.  Over in England, the country just could not keep a monarch on the throne for very long, and this had been going on for quite a while. Whereas France, another superpower, had a lot of stability with their sun king, Louis XIV. Lully was in full force and ballet and opera and ballet operas were all the thing at Versailles.

Well, now it's all about the cello and it's this little guy's time to shine.  Rugeri's workshop may have been on the outskirts of Cremona, but it was an industrious hub of activity with instrument after instrument being produced. He was beginning to get a reputation for his fine sounding cellos that he made to a smaller an