Warren Nolan-Fordham is a professional violin maker currently living and working in Australia. During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s he lived and worked in Montsalvat, an artists colony in Eltham, Victoria, where his cottage contained his fifteenth century styled workshop, crammed with instruments. He now spends his time commuting between workshops in Melbourne and Tasmania where he works long hours, his life dictated by the work pattern of making and repairing instruments.
Nolan-Fordham began as a self-taught maker, building his first instrument when he was just 15, and was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 1979 to study in London. Good tools, it seems, are very difficult to obtain and Nolan-Fordham considers that “part of the concept of making is to have good tools”. He was fortunate enough to buy a collection of vintage handmade tools in an old shop in London and says these are made from much finer steel than is used in today’s mass-produced tools.
One of the few violin makers working exclusively in Australian timbers, Nolan-Fordham proudly asserts that they give better results and that he would always use Australian timbers which he feels are “outstandingly better” than, say, the spruce traditionally used. He uses Tasmanian mountain ash or Australian blackwood for the neck, scroll, back and sides, King William pine for the belly and Queensland silkwood or willow for the linings. He makes new bows and repairs old ones with brumby (wild pony) hair. Nolan-Fordham also includes eucalypt leaves and gumnut designs in his carvings on his ornate baroque instruments.
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He prefers the ornate instruments of the Brescian school from the late 1500s to the mid-1750s. Indeed, perhaps eccentrically, he has even adopted the lifestyle of the fifteenth century, saying “I was born 400 years too late”.
Warren Nolan-Fordham Related Links:
iLuthier
Melbourne Festival Australia
Fiddle News, Melbourne 2006