INTERNATIONAL VIOLIN MAKING COMPETITION
PRAGUE, 3.–7. June 2025
| 10:00-11:00 | John Dilworth - Violin making of today: Art or craft? We think about Stradivari and
Guarneri del Gesu as artists because of the value we now put on them. For young makers there is a lot of pressure
to define themselves as copyists, whether making antiqued models or not, and not as independently creative. In
a competition, we have to follow very close rules which define what a good violin is or should look like. |
| 14:00-15:00 | Carlo Chiesa - A critical look to the early history of the violin to understand what is a violin today. The violin "standard", as we consider it today was developed from an idea originated at the beginning of the 16th century by the Cremonese masters. Their success - and the success of the violin as we know it today - probably is the result of further reasons. |
John Dilworth is a renowned British violin maker and restorer. He was born in 1954 in London. Originally trained as a harp maker in Kent, he later studied at Newark Technical College and continued at the Violin Making School under the guidance of its founder and director Maurice Bouette, deepening his knowledge with Glen Collins and Wilfred Saunders. He worked briefly for Max Möller in Amsterdam and for 13 years at J. & A. Beare in London. In 1991 he opened his own studio in Twickenham focussing to new making, restoration, writing and research. John has extraordinary experience with rare old instruments. Based on scientific research, he developed a varnish that is comparable to the varnishes of the old masters from the 18th century. In 1994 he collaborated with Peter Biddulph on the exhibition "Masterpieces of Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Aside from regular contributions to ‘The Strad’ magazine since 1984, he has contributed to numberous important books incl. ‘Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu’, pub. Peter Biddulph 1998, ‘The British Violin’, pub. British Violin Making Association, 2000, ‘Four Centuries of Violin Making’, ed. T. Inglis, Cozio Publishing 2006, Revised catalogue to the Musical Instrument Collection at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 2010, ‘The Brompton’s Book of Violin and Bow makers’, pub. Usk Publishing, 2012, ‘The Golden Age of Violin Making in Spain’ by Jorge Pozas, pub. Trito Edicions Barcelona 2015‘, Antonio Stradivari, the Complete Works’, Beares Publishing, 2024. As a judge, lecturer and teacher he participated in violin making competitions, conferences and workshops worldwide.
Carlo Chiesa has been involved in violin making for a over 40 years. Graduated from the Milan School of Lutherie under the guidance of Renato Scrollavezza and Luca Primon, he is currently the Master of a workshop in his city of Milan. He has collaborated with numerous important luthiers in Italy and abroad, but his main masters are the great luthiers of the past, whose works he studies with unceasing passion. In addition to construction of new instruments and restoration of ancient ones, he is particularly interested in setup, always aiming to obtain the best from the instruments musicians entrust to his care, tailoring the sound in collaboration with performers. His study of ancient instruments made him an appreciated expert in identifying Italian violins of the 17 th and 18th Century, a field in which he is particularly specialized, also following his extensive archival research. Carlo wrote studies and articles on ancient instruments and luthiers and has a wide bibliography both for specialists and a more informative level for a general audience of passionates. He is regularly invited to present his studies and share his knowledge at meetings for luthiers and experts and has been a judge at major international violin making competitions, including the Indianapolis competition (2014) and Cremona (2021). For more than twenty years he has been a member of the International Association of Violin Makers (EILA).
