Guarneri Twins (Il Cannone & La Cannona)

 

In my second year of studies at Chicago School of Violin Making (CSVM) I decided to learn the making style of Late Giuseppe Guarneri "del Gesu" in more depth. 

I was inspired to make a Viola based on Paganini's celebrated Guarneri violin nicknamed "Il Cannone". Nicolo Paganini named this violin Canon due to its powerful and resonant sound.  

Since enlarging a Violin model and turning it into a Viola was against the school's tradition, I ended up making two instruments at the same time under guidance of my teacher Jeff Phillips. 

I enlarged the Violin mold and outline by 115 percent to end up with a 16 inch Viola.

For making these Siblings I tried to choose similar wood from the CSVM's inventory. I chose Engelmann One piece Spruce with density of 0.35 for the violin and slightly stiffer two piece top for the viola. For the backs I was to able to find similar looking maples with density of 0.55-0.56 and identical ribs. Both European. Here are the Garlands/Rib Structures.

The Next step was transferring of the rib structure to the plates and drawing the corners. Unlike other Cremonese makers including Stradivari, On late del Gesu violins the corner and edge hangover don't follow the rib structure usually and we see more edge surface inside the C bouts.

Next step was to do the arching. For the violin, I combined the available arching templates from the Biddulph Book, Strad poster, Templates from Academia Cremonensis as well as pictures and videos available from different sources. Recently I was lucky to have a look at the original violin in Genoa. In my humble opinion The Arching drawings by Roger Hargrave in the Biddulph book are closer to the reality. For the Viola I changed the arch height and shapes differently. Invaluable advice of Ryan Soltis helped a lot with the arching design. 

 

For the Purfling I decided to make them from the scratch. I chose Birch and Pearwood and dyed the Pear veneers to turn them into a light black. 

Next step was graduating (thicknessing) the plates, cutting FF holes, installing Bass bars, Soundpost veneer and closing the box. 

For the Neck and Scroll I decided to make them in two pieces and do a Neck Graft. I selected deeply flamed North American maple (possibly and old inventory of International Violins) and for scroll softer Eastern European less flamed maple. The scrolls were completely improvised based on a few Guarneri family scrolls.

Finally it was time to put thing together. 

After some tanning in a UV light box, it was time to start the ground and varnish the twins.

  

A few month later under guidance of Dan Gillespie I set them up. The original violin which is being kept at Genoa's city hall has Ivory nut. Since it was hard to find pieces of Legal ivory including Mammoth fossils, I decided to use Indian Beef bone. It was very hard to work with but the result was satisfying. I used the same material for the saddles as well. 

Then it was the time for shaving and installing the pegs

Later I purchased the instruments from school and decided to slightly antique them at home and during lunch breaks at school since antiquing is not the part of the curriculum at CSVM. Here I should thank my teachers for their advice and of course patience :)

Recently I performed on La Cannona at The University Club of Chicago with my colleague Massimo Scapin.