Jonathan Vacanti sat at his workshop with his tools and patiently scraped away everything that was not a violin.
“Violin making is a very old system from the 1500s, so they didn’t have sandpaper, so they used these scrapers,” he told The Daily Progress, working away.
Vacanti is a luthier, meaning he crafts stringed instruments. When professional violinists and cellists want a fine handmade instrument, they go to the modest building which hosts his shop at Third and Market streets in downtown Charlottesville.
The 54-year-old has been working in Charlottesville for more than a decade, and remains the only luthier in the area. He spends his days in his studio, tooling away at violins, violas and cellos which will later be heard at concerts, benefits and other performances all across Central Virginia and the commonwealth.
Luthiery is not a common line of work by any means. Vacanti started out studying sculpture and was brainstorming what kinds of things he could sculpt. When someone suggested violins to him, he consulted his phone book, visited a luthier and watched the man work.
“As soon as I saw it, I knew,” he said, “this is what I want to do.”
But violin making is not easy to get into. Before today’s violin making schools in Salt Lake City, Chicago and Boston were an option, aspiring luthiers had to learn the trade as it had been learned for centuries: as an apprentice under a master. Vacanti recalls consulting the renowned Philippe Raynaud at Boston’s Reuning and Son Violins.
“I went to [Raynaud’s] shop, like mine, and I begged him to teach me, and he said no three times,” said Vacanti. “The third time I came back, he said, ‘All right, I’ll teach you how to do it.’”
After studying under Raynaud, and then later with Amherst, Massachusetts-based Andranik Gaybaryan, he set up shop with his family in Charlottesville, only because his wife’s family had already relocated to the area. He soon learned, though, of the vibrant local music scene.
“Charlottesville has lots of symphonies and professional violinists. It’s a very rich classical community that I didn’t realize was here,” he said. “There’s a lot of classical music, more than most cities this size.”
More than a decade after he opened his shop, he produces instruments for some of the most talented musicians in Virginia, including those in the Charlottesville Symphony, the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra and Norfolk-based Virginia Symphony.
In construction, though, they are Stradivari’s and del Gesù’s violins just as much as they are Vacanti’s. The blueprints Vacanti uses are based on violins made by Italian masters Antonio Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesù. Researchers in the 2010s used CT scan technology to create models of the original centuries-old violins, giving modern-day luthiers exact measurements with which they may approximate the greats.
His instruments begin as solid pieces of spruce and maple wood. He has dozens of pieces, enough for a lifetime of craftsmanship. The spruce is sourced from Italy and the maple from Germany, both from trees grown specifically for musical purposes.
The soft spruce forms the top, or soundboard, the piece which the strings vibrate against. The hard maple becomes the frame and the back. Like a drum, the top is soft and the sides hard.
“You know how a drum rim is made out of hard wood and then the top is skin, that’s the way the violin is designed,” said Vacanti. “The spruce is the soft, vibrating top.”
He cuts the pieces into the shapes according to his blueprints, then carves the wood into a smooth surface using a carving knife and a woodworking tool known as a thumb plane.
Once he has glued all the parts together, he will add a varnish made from tree resin and linseed oil, and then add the metal strings. The whole process — from the woodcutting to the varnish to the stringing — is for the most part the same way it has been done for centuries.
“The only part that’s not traditional is that we use the CAT scan,” he said. “Stradivari didn’t have a CAT scan machine.”
While he spends most of his time crafting the pieces, he also maintains a showroom where he displays and sells factory-made violins for students. This part of his business, however, may soon take a hit from President Donald Trump’s tariffs..
“The wholesalers are saying the instruments that I buy from China will be double in price,” he said. “Instruments I buy for $1,000 and resell will now be $2,000.”
Nevertheless, he still scrapes away on his next piece. When The Daily Progress dropped by his workshop he was working on a Stradivari design, using the same methods he was taught by Raynaud, and the same methods used since the time of Stradivari.
What would Vacanti say if a young novice asked to study under him, as he did Raynaud?
“Somebody asks me once a month,” said Vacanti. “I just tell them, ‘I just don’t have time yet.’”
But one day, when he is less busy, he said, he will choose an apprentice.
“I definitely have to pass it on somehow.”
Source: www.dailyprogress.com