Handcrafted violins take six months to make, but bring timeless joy

For six months, Richard Hall has worked in the warm, cluttered workshop behind his music store in Korumburra, shaping an Australian hardwood violin for a customer who has been waiting to play it. Glue pots, wood shavings, planes and unfinished instruments fill the space, while musicians and customers come through the shop at the front.

Hall, 59, learned to build guitars when he was 19. Music lessons, woodworking jobs and years of cabinet-making skills eventually led him to open Black Creek Music Merchants in the South Gippsland town. He said he kept a workshop throughout his life because “I just liked making things using my cabinet-making skills that I learned all those years ago.”

The urge to build instruments became stronger when his son Tony began playing violin. Hall repaired Tony’s instruments in the shed and kept trying to make instruments capable of matching his son’s growing ability. Tony later switched to viola and now performs with a Finnish chamber orchestra. Hall said, “I still haven’t got there yet.”

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I just liked making things using my cabinet-making skills that I learned all those years ago.

Local fiddle player Ellen Hubble ordered her own bespoke violin on the first day the store opened. She welcomed having a music shop and luthier nearby, especially a violin maker close to home. Her connection to the instrument reaches back to her German-Jewish refugee grandfather, who arrived with his wife and daughter carrying few possessions but brought a violin.

Hubble did not begin learning to play until her late 40s. She and her husband now take part in the local music scene and help organize the Wonthaggi Acoustic Music Festival. For Hall, the violin represents another meeting point between a lifelong love of music and the patient craft he has practiced for decades.

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I still haven’t got there yet.