Violin art number 4

This is 'Sonia', on display in the window of an optician shop so the image of an eye is quite appropriate.

My further investigations on the Violin Trail this lunchtime resulted in me finding an info leaflet about the Autograph Violin project complete with details of all the collaborators. Here we go, in the words of Ezia di Labio, the maker of the violins:

I had the good fortune to come across some wood in the attic of a dilettante violin maker in Romagna. The wood perfectly seasoned, excellent acoustically would not be acceptbale aesthetically for contemporary violins. Should I have thrown it away? To have done that would have been an impossibly brutal act considering my immediate attachment with the wood. The wood could make such excellent violins. I decided to render it 'specials' with the collaboration of other art forms. And 'Violino d'Autore' (the Autograph Violin) was born.

Every 'Autograph Violin' is completely handmade and unique. Different artists from various disciplines were invited to contaminate a violin with complete freedom expressing their professions and personalities. A poet, an artist, composer, philosopher, photographer .... it just became such a really unique collection.

The decorated violin remains a marvellous sound producer and for the luthier who made the actual instrument it remains essentially a musical instrument, constructed precisely to be played requiring its last phase of varnish and finishing. The work of the luthier is against the tendencies of the world in which we currently live: nothing synthetic and disposable; our work is made to last through time and with time accompanies the most beautiful and perfect of the arts: music.

The full range of collaborators (21 in all) come from the following disciplines/art forms:
Poets
Artists
A performance artist
A composer
Musicians
A song writer
A surgeon
A stage designer and illustrator
An art historian
A grafitti artist
A calligrapher
Architects
A philisopher and artist

The leaflet I picked up also shows where all the violins are placed. I have until May 25th to see them all.

And I've decided to go mad and treat myself to a ticket to the concert on 29th May at which all the violins will be played.