Stepping into Geoffrey J. Seitz's south St. Louis shop feels like an antique woodcut come to life. The violin maker and his assistants sit hunched over high workbenches and peer through magnifiers at the abalone inlay, the ebony purfling, a rosewood tuning peg. Using handcrafted knives, they shave down fingerboards, adjust soundposts and bridges and re-hair bows as piles of wood shavings accumulate at their feet. The strong smells of hide glue and custom varnish seem from another time. The... More »
