Violin in the Attic
A stack of hundred-year-old photos led to the discovery of a family heirloom hiding in plain sight.
A week after the 2024 presidential election, this Facebook post stopped me scrolling:
I am closed ... If you have a new repair, etc. I will no longer accept the job. There’s not enough joy left in my soul now to do this any longer. Thanks for your business since 1998.
It was similar to the many messages of despair being shared that week, but this one surprised me. This man, Aaron Morris, is one of those people – or so it seemed to me – who was fortunate to make a livelihood from a true passion, and not only that, be extraordinary at his craft. I know because he did a wonderful thing for my family and me a few years back...
In 2017 my aunt found a bundle of negatives wrapped in paper in the attic of her home in Buffalo, NY, which has been passed down generation to generation since our relatives built it more than 100 years ago. She sent me the package and I hired Photoworks in San Francisco to scan them.
The images were astonishing. For the first time we had pictures of family we had never seen. Before they were only anonymous names on family trees, names that were later given to newborns to remember them, but whose faces were unknown, whose worlds shared the same landmarks as ours but on another timeline. Now, we could meet our ancient grandparents – as young parents and children – and peer into the lives of Polish immigrants settling into early Buffalo, which then was emerging from fields and a simple lakefront into the country's 8th largest city.
What is now an inner city neighborhood in East Buffalo was then their little farmstead.
There was a lot more than just their neighborhood. There were glimpses of an undeveloped Lake Erie shore, as well as Niagara Falls.
One image in particular caught my eye. I swore I had seen that violin before.
I remembered that when I was a kid, my great grandma passed away and we cleaned out her house. My parents moved boxes of stuff from her attic to ours. Sometimes I would rummage through our attic, looking for hidden Christmas presents, and I remember seeing an old coffin-style case with a violin inside.
On my next trip home to visit my family, I went up into the attic with my wife and we couldn't believe our luck, the case was still there.
A few quick Google image searches narrowed it down to a German factory-made violin, possibly in Markneukirchen, between 1900-1910, which checks out because I believe the original photograph was dated to 1912. The GSB-engraved clasp suggests the case was manufactured by George S. Bond in Charlestown, New Hampshire.
My college buddy's father, Aaron Morris, is a luthier in North Carolina. He encouraged me to send it his way to have a look.
He quickly dissected it and confirmed it was a Stradivarius replica with a "Germany" decal pasted inside.
Six months later, I received two pictures from his shop with the caption: It can play again.
Aaron, thank you to for restoring our family's treasure and bringing color and sound to a very old memory.
And I must say, I hope you find the joy again. We need more people like you.
PS. Since these photos were discovered, I have begun to experiment with AI tools to colorize black and white photos. Here is that original with a quick color pass, next to a photo of my daughter 115 years later with her great-great grandfather's violin.
I'd like to see it when you're back. I played the violin until I was 15, gave it up when in high school because I didn't think it was cool.
Interesting thing about violin: it has no frets, unlike a guitar, so there are innumerable shades in between notes. Similar to comparing analog and digital. I've come to believe that true art often lies with the imperfections in between notes. Like with Lesley's quilts: her geometry was whiimsical, not rigid. Keith Richards touches on this in his surprisingly good autobiography.
Hiya Nell and Lew!