Restoration Workshop

Claire Curtis is a violin maker and restorer in Southern Maine. She started her violin career in 1990, taking classes at the UNH Violin Craftsmanship Institute. Over the next ten years she took courses in violin repair (with Hans Nebel and Horst Kloss), bow repair (with Arnold Bone and Lynn Hannnings), bow making (with Lynn Hannings), and finally, violin making with Geigenbaumeister Karl Roy. Later, she became one of Karl Roy’s workshop assistants, and he asked her to help him research and write his book “The Violin: Its History and Making” (published 2006), for which she travelled to Mittenwald and Cremona.

Claire attended the Oberlin Violin Workshop for setup, acoustics, and restoration, which exposed her to a wide variety of approaches and techniques used by luthiers around the world. She was, for a time, editor of the Journal of the Violin Society of America and is currently on the staff of the Oberlin Violin Restoration Workshop and the Board of Directors of the Violin Society of America.