I started my apprenticeship as a violinmaker at the age of 19 at the Violinmaking school in Mittenwald, a place with a deep-seated respect for tradition, which cultivates and perpetuates a high level of technical skills and craftsmanship.
Two years in Hieronymus Köstler's workshop in Stuttgart followed the school and gave me insight into repair and restoration, as well as providing me with the opportunity to make my first copies of old italian instruments. From Stuttgart an interest in bowmaking took me to Cremona where I trained and received a degree in the bowmaking classes of Emilio Slaviero and Giovanni Lucchi. The next year, I opened my own workshop near Florence. For seven years I specialised in making new instruments, in particular copies of historical instruments.
In 1997, my family and I moved to Cully on Lake Geneva, where I set up my new workshop for the manufacture of new violins, violas and cellos along the same principles that I had already chosen to follow in Italy.
In the following years I took part in various international competitions, and I am proud to say that every instrument submitted was awarded a prize. I am a founder member of “Klanggestalten”, a German partnership of about 20 instrument and bowmakers, as well as helping to initiate the festival “Cullyclassique” in 2004, which has gained a reputation as a small but serious and successful event of classical music.
Most of the instruments from my workshop are copies of classical Italian models of the 17th and 18th centuries, either built to order, or from an original idea and initiative: but always intended for a musician.
Several foundations, active in Switzerland, Europe and abroad, have bought instruments from my Cully workshop.