Authenticity

A gentleman from Wales once visited the shop--the steady stream of visitors from all over the world keeps us from feeling out of things in this little New England fishing village. He asked the inevitable question: "What instruments have you copied yours from?"

It would have delighted him, no doubt, if we could have said, "We copied this one from the little Flemish at Yale, and this one from the 1769 Taskin, and this one from the Domenicus in New York"...and on and on.

With every edition of our instruments we have been able to steal more from the old builders--'copy', if you will--until today we don't think any builder incorporates more of the old ways than we do. But our reasons for this copying have not been a desire for 'authenticity'--still less to make fake antiques. It is just that we have not been smart enough to figure out a better way to do things than the old builders worked out in those three hundred years.

Adapting modern tools and technology to accomplish the ends of the old builders has been difficult. Compared with with the technology of the eighteenth century, modern machinery and tools are clumsy and frustrating. A skilled craftsman with simple hand tools, if he is really skillful, can do many things more quickly and efficiently (unless your quantities are very large) than the modern machinery. Many materials and skills that were common in the eighteenth century are no longer available to us, and the search for acceptable substitutes has sometimes taken years.

Those modern builders who advertise that they make 'exact copies' of old instruments amaze and bewilder us. They are evidently much smarter than we are--or else they are much less familiar with the old instruments. In our humble opinion, it can't be done.

Nor would a sensible person want to do it. We would rather copy the very central idea of all honest builders, ancient and modern: Using the materials available and all the knowledge and sensitivity and research and awareness we can muster, make musical instruments for the sound and action of which we take complete responsibility. Curiously enough, this point of view results in our instruments being much closer to the antiques than any of the so-called 'copies'.

Well, so be it.