Ep 22. Francesco Rugeri Part 4 with Duane Rosengard

In this episode we will be looking at Francesco’s most productive period of making instruments with a busy workshop and 4 sons helping him out. Jason Price from Tarisio fine violins and bows talks to us about Rugeris distinctive making style and his prolific production at this time in his life but things do not run as smoothly as Rugeri would like as he finds himself in hot water with court cases and grumpy children.

Thankyou to the Australian Chamber Orchestra for permission to play their music.

  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 Mircourt.

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, famine and 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 show is sponsored by Tarisio Fine Instruments and Bows. And right now, I would like to talk about a formidable database you can access today, if you wish, called the COSIO Archive.

For people who listen to this podcast, something that you might be thinking 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. Here is Jason Price, Director of Tarisio, to tell you about it.

Jason Price

Yes, the Cosio Archive. We now own it, maintain it, and are continually adding to it. Over a hundred thousand instruments in the database, over four thousand makers, which we are following and tracking, two hundred thousand auction prices. It's really quite cool. If I pull up the stats for, you know, a maker like Ruggeri, I get 336 instruments by Francesco Ruggieri.

It's a unique resource and we hope it's really useful.

Linda Lespets

 And so what I love is that often in some databases, you just get one, photo per maker, but in the Cosio archive, for example, for Ruggeri, you're able to look at the maker's whole career in photos and you see influences from other makers. You can see the dates where his sons are working for him and you can see examples of that work and the style.

They're similar. For example, you can look up Vincenzo Ruggeri and see how his style is similar to his father. Yeah. Yeah. There's a violin in your archive, uh, 1680  called the Milanolo, which is really beautiful. Yeah. Which is a small violin. So that would be an example of his work when he's working with his sons in when the workshop was very successful.

And then there's a violin from 1650, which was his earlier work.  I think maybe my favorite name for an instrument is the Admiral Buckle.  Admiral Buckle. That's wonderful. His life and his, it kind of reads like something out of a Jane Austen, book.  Wonderful. And then, uh, there's a 1673 cello, which is really beautiful, and the, the quality of the photo is amazing.

You can zoom right in and see the texture of the varnish. You can see the purfling. You can tell that the purfling's been tinted. Yep. There are examples of from 1692, so his later work, and 1695, right to the, the end of his making career, which is extraordinary.

Jason