While touring with the youth orchestra of my hometown, we happened to visit the violinmaking school in Wales. That was my first close contact with the craft in 1984. I then started my training as a violinmaker in Cremona in 1989.

Usually I make four instruments a year. I work according to the classical method used by the Cremonese masters in the golden age of violinmaking. For varnishing I follow the Byzantine coating system, which was well known and applied in Italy since the Renaissance.

The great Cremonese masters Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri and their instruments are an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Every piece of wood is unique and needs to be modelled in its own way. It is the wood itself that guides my work.

I love experiencing the wood and its qualities with all the senses: how it feels under my tools, how it vibrates when I tap it, how it smells when it’s cut… But it’s only at the very end of the making process, when fitting strings to the instrument, that I know if I got it right!