Stamford Pride November 2020

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STAMFORD’S LUTHIER

STRING

THEORY This month we celebrate the opening of a brand new business in Stamford as Libby Summers opens the door to her violin making, repair and renovation shop. It’s another string to the town’s bow... Words & Images: Rob Davis.

“I set up a business producing hand-knitted bags and alpaca wool hot water bottles which were commissioned by John Lewis and sold by the retailer at Christmas time. I even commissioned my own alpaca wool from Peru and sold it online, alongside DIY knitting kits and craft projects.”

THE SUN WAS SHINING, the morning mist had burnt off the fields as I drove through the countryside and the pupils of Stamford Endowed Schools were filing neatly into their classrooms. The start of another Monday, but it was a morning unlike those which preceded it for Libby Summers, as the teacher turned luthier – or violin maker turned around the sign of her new shop, Stamford Strings, to read ‘Open.’

“But this was around 2012-2015 and online retailing was maturing at a fierce rate and those businesses that were best placed to compete were huge retailers who could sell cheaper and throw hundreds of thousands of pounds at things like SEO.”

It would be particularly apt to state that the new shop is another string to Libby’s bow, given the metaphor’s relevance to her role as a creator, repairer and seller of violins, violas and cellos, now with her own dedicated premises on St. Leonard’s Street. “I had a wonderful teacher called Jane Page at Stamford High School who made learning the instrument really enjoyable,” recalls Libby. “My grandfather was a musician and tried to pass on the joy to my father, but he was more of a mathematician… and he didn’t really get to grips with it!”

“The same scheme still exists in the school today, which is really commendable.”

“That’s fine because I inherited my grandfather’s instrument instead and in hindsight that was really important. You’ve more passion for an instrument if you’ve a really nice example of one to play, right from the start. I always had a tremendous love and respect for my first violin.”

Whilst studying Libby also lead the university’s chamber orchestra and upon graduation, moved to Cambridge to take up a research position in the city, eventually meeting her husband and then moving to Surrey.

“Stamford Endowed School had a brilliant scheme when I first started to play at 11 years of age whereupon each child could learn a stringed instrument.”

Libby was raised in the town but left to study towards a MA (Hons) in Social Anthropology at Fife’s University of St Andrews in the early 1990s.

“I fell into teaching the violin,” Libby admits. “We lived in the quintessential Surrey village where many of the other ladies in the area had founded cottage industries. We were surrounded by textile artists, artisan bakeries, craft business and other rural enterprises.”

“I had already undertaken a teaching qualification and at the same time I was picking up lots more violin tuition. I visited Newark’s School of Violin Making – a leading place for the craft, one of the best five places in the world to learn the skills needed – and with just one sniff of the wonderfully scented workshops, bristling with the chafing of a plane and murmer of craftsmanship, I knew I’d found a way to combine my two passions; crafts and music.” Covid has made the completion of Libby’s course a little more difficult. Ordinarily around 18-20 students work alongside one another on the timed creation of their magnum opus; a violin made over five weeks to be judged by Peter Beare. For the uninitiated, that’s the super-posh home of stringed instruments on London’s Queen Anne Street established in 1865 and now home to Beare’s International Violin Society. >>

Above: Libby opened her new violin shop on St Leonard’s Street recently. Cutting the ribbon on opening day were Stamford’s Mayor Bill Turner and Deputy Mayor Gloria Johnson.

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