From the moment you walk through the door of Cremona House Violin Shop in Bristol's Park Row, it becomes clear that little has changed here in a very long time.
The walls are lined with scores of antique violins, hanging like cuts of meat in a butcher's, exquisite in their rosewood and ebony detailing. They seem alive.
Some date back as far as 1690, and each has a story to tell. As do the rows of violas, cellos and double basses.
It is like standing among a crowd of old souls who have seen more of life than we could ever dream of – from the frenzied playing of the long-forgotten maestro, the on-stage moments of glory, the idle plucking of the schoolgirl as she ambles reluctantly to her music lessons, and the gentle performances from elderly fingers to empty rooms.
All those hands that have held a bow to their strings have long since passed into history. Yet here these instruments live on – patiently waiting for the moment they are picked up by their next owner.
Richard Bristow, the shop's current owner, admits that both the shop and the instruments have been around long enough to have often met each other before.
"It's not unusual for somebody to bring in their great-grandfather's violin, which he'd bought from this very shop decades before," he says with a smile. "It's a small world when you're dealing with antique violins."
Richard sits at an old wooden desk, studying the front of an ancient violin that has been brought in for repair. He is surrounded by the floor-to-ceiling hardwood cabinets filled with instruments – even the cabinets are established antiques, installed when the shop was new in 1879.
In a back room, working with a single spot lamp, fellow restorer Ken Green is quietly working on another painstaking rebuild.
Both are trained violin makers, but their work focuses primarily on restoration and sales.
"You have to be somewhere between an artist, a craftsman and an antique dealer," Richard explains.
The quaint shop is believed to be the oldest violin shop to have remained at the same premises, not only in the country, but in the world. At least, Richard has never found an older one.
"It was opened in 1879 by George Darby – just 19 years after Park Row, the road itself, was constructed. There were shops here before 1860, but they faced the other way – overlooking what was then St Michael's village," Richard explains.
Richard likes to think what the world was like in 1879, when Darby first turned the sign on the door to open.
"Bristol was at its Victorian height, while over in the States it was still the Wild West – that was the year that the classic cowboy town Tombstone was founded," he says.
"Then you wind the clock forward to 2012, and here we are 133 years later, and the place looks almost unchanged. The work we do is essentially unchanged. The only difference is in the value of the instruments.
"Go back 50 years, and there were violins sunning themselves in the window of this shop that are now worth more than £30,000. We wouldn't dream of putting them in the shop window today. Almost all the violins we sell have been brought in to us – instruments that belonged to somebody's father or grandfather, that they no longer want. Sometimes people get a pleasant surprise.
"Of course, the best violins in the world sell for millions of pounds. They're rare of course, but there are plenty of old Italian violins out there that are worth tens and hundreds of thousands of pounds.
"Just last week we had an elderly lady bring in her old violin, which she no longer wanted to keep, and she was thrilled when we told her it was worth £200,000."
George Darby handed the shop on to his son Harry shortly before his death in 1920. Harry ran the shop for a few years alongside violin maker Albert Tinney, who later bought the shop and remained there until the late 1970s, when he died at the age of 95.
"I bought the place shortly after, in 1982," Richard says, "so I'm only the fourth owner of the shop in more than 130 years."
Richard came to the profession after a car accident brought a sudden end to his career as a social worker.
"I couldn't get around as easily, so I decided to retrain in a trade that didn't involve the same sort of mobility. I'd always fancied taking up violin making as a retirement job, but I ended up having an opportunity to do it much sooner.
"I sometimes wonder what will happen to the place when I've had enough of it all," the 63-year-old sighs. "I hope there are still violin makers coming out of the woodwork in the younger generations, and that someone will want to take it on when the time comes.
"Everything is going over to the internet so rapidly. Who knows whether this place will still be here in another century?"
Source: http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/Strings-thing-oldest-shop/story-15847057-detail/story.html
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