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He carves music from spruce and maple
By MARINA BROWN
Yet through a side entrance in his garage, next to the plaster dwarf lawn ornaments and the SUV, one steps into the timeless world of the medieval luthier,or violinmaker. Walls, 86, a balding, bespectacled man, lives at the end of a shady road. His hobby of more than 70 years has developed into an obsession. The workshop smells of his craft, with its aging wood, shavings, varnishes and glues. Violins in all stages of production hang at every angle. After all, Walls says as he flips on the classical music that always plays in the shop, "This kind of art begins with carpentry. People tend to romanticize violins, but it's really about woodworking and knowing your wood."
"They used to say about my mother that she could cook and saw. She's the one who made me my first toy airplane. She's also the one who got me interested in art and music." Walls' mother died when he was 9, and the family moved from Jacksonville to Tampa, where his father opened his medical practice. Both of Walls' parents exposed him to music. His mother played piano; his father, the horn. Walls asked to take violin lessons. He hung around an instrument repair shop whose motto was "If I can see it, I can build it." He made his first violin of balsa wood, household glue and varnish. "I played that violin in the Junior Youth Orchestra, and it didn't sound half bad," Walls says. "I may have had trouble keeping it together, though." He didn't stop with violins. He built a Model T car from parts, a 12-foot sailboat and radios, and he whittled toys for himself and for friends. He continued studying violin (still does) and eventually played assistant first chair in the Tampa Orchestra, the precursor to the Florida Orchestra. His practical side prevailed, and he committed himself to a 30-year civil service career as a purchasing agent for the Air Force at MacDill Air Force Base.
He still had the urge to feel the wood and imagine the music that would be coaxed out of something he had made, and customers were knocking on his door. Walls circles the workshop and picks up a partly complete violin. "This one, like all string instruments, is made of a spruce top and maple for the ribs and back. By the time I'm finished, it will have between seven and 10 coats of varnish, and if I only worked on this violin, might take me a month to complete." Asked whether he'd seen The Red Violin, in which the secret ingredient in the varnish of a famous instrument is the blood of a beloved wife who died in childbirth, Walls casts a dubious eye. "I'd say each violinmaker puts a little bit of his blood into each instrument he makes. You have a relationship with the wood."
He has made more than 100 violins and sold nearly all of them, often at prices up to $10,000. "Sometimes, I'd just as soon they not buy them," he says, taking out an unusual, almost blond, instrument. "This is one of my favorites." He plays a few measures of Bach. Walls sits down and wipes his hands on the long, striped apron he wears when working, the one that makes him look like an artist or a sculptor. "Sometimes my wife worries that I spend too much time in the workshop. Either I'm making a violin, repairing a violin, playing a violin or taking out my watercolors to paint a picture," he says, laughing. "But the one thing I'd still like to do if I could is to sail on a 75-foot sailboat. "In fact, if you want to know, I wouldn't mind building it first." - Marina Brown is a cellist with the Tampa Bay Symphony and a registered nurse and case manager at Hospice of the Florida Suncoast. She lives in Treasure Island.
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From the Times Seniority pages |
