Master of craft: The violin maker and the fishmonger.

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This project began with the master craft of violins making or Luthiers, as I was keen to learn more about a traditional craft that was still practiced today the same way it was bay in the 16th century. During my initial research I was interested to discover the array of animal-based products used in traditional violin making. Such as catgut strings, hide glue and horse hair. These bi product of the meat industry and waste from the meat industry was the starting point of my experiments with violins. Perhaps we could utilise more meat industry waste in the musical instrument craft?

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I visited a violin maker Garth Ballard at his extraordinary workshop in London where he  demonstrated his craft and process of how he makes his violins, key learnings from the experience was that each violin maker has a unique style and suttle differences in their craft, Gareth was practically inserted in formulas for creating the perfect violin, mixing traditional with maths and technology.

As I was keen to make my violin and interested in waste from the meat industry, I sourced my material from my local fish Monger, Ellis and Jones in Greenwhich , who showed me the correct way to filet, cut, skin and descale and debone a fish. They also provided me with my resources from there fish waste bucket. The fish industry has a vast amount of waste, from bones and scales , to water and rotten fish and fish farming.

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 With my knowledge now of both Violin making and Fishmonger I experimented widely with the potential of the fish waste. Perhaps the most successful of which were, fish guts which have become violin string, and fish leather which is a strong and mailable material with plenty of uses. However, I made many more successful materials which have a lot of potential still to be explored.  Further experiments will be need to prefect fish scale bioplastic, uses for fish blood and dried fish stomachs and many more.

At this stage my final object is a  violin created completely of Fish, covered with 4 fishes worth of leather, 2 fishes worth of strings and 1 fishes worth of bones. I think this is a successful piece portraying the need to find uses for fish waste and undiscovered potential for may of these materials. However I believe the strength of this project lies in the further investigation of the waste from the fish industry, and the mapping a single fishes journey from ocean to food to bi product and letting no part of the fish go to waste .

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