Last week, we had another scroll session: carving scrolls with low light and sitting close together around the central island. We have done that many times over the past five years - it’s a training session to improve flow in our craftsmanship. It’s not about the result, it’s about building skill and method. It started in Hassop road, when Gian and Mathieu were still working here, we had a few one day sessions carving Guarneri scrolls. In order to achieve the raw, confident Guarneri style, I set time limits and left some dimensional freedom. I am much stricter with method and choice of tools.

Scroll session with Chen-Han and Simona, February 2026

With the thicknesses, f-holes and bass bars done and the backs glued on, two DNA-Strad bodies - I’ll explain later what I mean by DNA - were coming together well and we needed to make some scrolls. I laid out the instructive set of scrolls each left at a step where a tool change was necessary and each tool for the relevant step. I carved it at the end of my scroll retreat in autumn 2024 after carving 15 scrolls in a row to grow my craft and polish my method. I found it very satisfying to separate steps and only use one tool for each step. The resulting scroll has a certain inevitability, something that says to me: This is how I am and I cannot be different. In a nutshell, this explains what I mean with DNA-Strad.

Back to our workbench and last week: together with Jef and Chen-Han, we carved scrolls each with their distinct hand, but all following the same steps with the same tools. It was only on day two that I realised, that it was for the first time ever, that during a scroll session, we had no casts of original Cremonese scrolls on the workbench, and no photos either. That was a moment of joy, this is why I am writing this post!

At the end of the week, we had five beautiful Strad scrolls, each shows the hand of the maker, one being finer and lighter, one more bold and determined and they are clearly all from one strong craftsmanship tradition.

No casts on the table