Roger Hansell studied fine art at London’s Central School of Art, before beginning his career in Italy as a professional string instrument maker. He started his own business, Hansell Violins in 1987, which he still runs today in Leyburn, Yorkshire.
Hansell begins our conversation by telling me about the book he arbitrarily selected from a shelf in his college library, which ignited his interest in violins: “I pulled out a well-known book by Karel Jalovec about violin makers, and the images of the violins just spoke to me very directly. I was immediately captivated by the shapes and variety of the forms.”
We then discuss why Hansell was drawn to a career in instrument making: “It seemed like a romantic and mysterious world to me… There isn’t certainty in much of it. People try to make a better sound by varying the contact [of the bow] and the pressure on the string, and both have a tremendous effect as well. Nobody really knows why these effects happen.”
I am immediately struck by Hansell’s depiction: a craft that I perhaps categorised as being rather practical, following a set of rules, transforms now into a world of wonder and experimentation.
Hansell now tells me about how his background in fine art connects with his craftsmanship: “I don’t quite know how anybody who is not an artist would approach violin making. Of course, they do, and they may equally not quite understand my approach… A painting is also concerned with really not knowing. I am very comfortable with not knowing what the outcome is going to be.”
Now comparing his profession to science, he says, “the normal way of progressing in science is to make an experiment and observe the results, and then make another experiment to see what changes can be made. The problem in violin making is that each time you want to make another experiment, you’ve got to make another violin!”
The way Hansell relates instrument making to both art and science fascinates me, as he draws in two subjects which, while distinct, both have perception and understanding of the world at their core.
Our conversation now moves to how Hansell approaches making custom instruments: “An important part of making an instrument for a client is seeing how they address the violin. So, some people faced with a violin will play quite directly into it, quite good contact with the bow into the strings, and other people have more of a caressing way of drawing the sound out.”
He tells me of how he copes with incredibly specific requests: “Once I had somebody who wanted their instrument to sound like Amy Winehouse… I had to listen to Amy Winehouse and try to figure out what on earth my client was thinking about. There will be a point of contact between the sound that she made and the sound of the violin.”
This sparks a discussion on the recent release of the film, Back to Black. With the internet flooding with criticism on the poor replication of Amy Winehouse’s voice, I can’t help but wonder how Hansell created a violin which could mirror such a unique and specific sound.
When asked why he chose to run his business in Leyburn, Hansell exclaims, “A Yorkshireman always comes home!” He tells me of how his childhood as a farmer’s son impacted his career: “From early on with violin making – cutting wood, cutting any material – I had no problems, because I’d always worked with materials.”
In a brief interlude, Hansell reminisces on an influential figure from his childhood, a homeless man who helped him with his artwork:
“Early on he asked me to show him my paintings, which I did, and he gave me really good advice, all about the light source and the shadows, and how I could make things more realistic. It was a surprising thing in a way, with a normal prejudice I suppose towards somebody sleeping rough in a hedge, you don’t always expect them to turn out to be an artist.”
Recently, I reviewed a concert in York where Lucy Russell debuted Hansell’s beautiful hand-painted violin; a vibrant instrument decorated with flowers and ivy crawling up the sides.
“At the time that I was making that violin, and painting it, I was living in Italy, so I suppose what inspired me was picking the roadside flowers in Chianti. Conrad Roepel was one of my big interests at the time, and if you were to look at his paintings… you would see a connection with my painted violin.”
Hansell’s personal connection to his violin leads me to wonder whether it is hard to let go of the instrument when the time comes to pass it on to the client:
“I do often find it quite difficult to part with them… they become so much a part of me. When I see them again after a number of years, even little, tiny areas that I might have worked on particularly intensely, remind me, the moment I see them, of that time working on it. Each one is, in a way, a trigger for all kinds of memories.”
Like a scent that takes you back to your childhood, or that one song that flashes you back to the summer before university, each of Hansell’s instruments pinpoints his own significant moments in time.