Violin, looking for a new tune

We have come to the letter V in the Blogging from A to Z challenge.

My V is for violin.

I used to play the violin in the past. I could make my violin career into a long story, but in real time it was pretty short. It only lasted for a few years. I quit somewhere in my teens, when I was 14-15 or so.

Many years later and totally by chance, I walked into a violin atelier in Stockholm. I asked if they had any “violin spare parts” on offer, as I was looking for some, to make jewellery of. I first interpreted the man’s face expression as shock or scepticism, but then realised that he was only browsing his mind to see if he would have something in house. He then asked me to join him to the atelier behind the shop.

He assured me that “No, I don’t find your idea crazy at all! I am myself trying to work out how to make a lamp of violin parts”.

I have had these pieces for probably 15 years now. Until now, I have had no clear vision of how to use them for jewellery. They still bide their time. I don’t want to chop them up without a good reason, in some late night fiddling with the jeweller saw, following a capricious idea that I won’t remember the next day. No, I want them to fit into something that makes sense. For them and for myself.

– What is this mumbo-jumbo-talk, why do you refer to them as “them”, as if they have anything to say?
– They do have something to say, they do speak already, look at their curves and shapes.
– What? They are just things, some pieces of wood. Get real, will you?
– Hey, look at all the shapes here, and the marks they carry after holding the strings tightly. So many tracks to follow, does it have to be more real than this?

Perhaps the best thing to do is to hang one of those pegs on a ribbon around my neck. Voilà, done, finished, no fuzz, straight on. What you see is what you get: This once belonged to a violin.

Time will tell what kind of new tune these pieces will be playing (if any).

Do you have any jewellery that was made of old instrument parts? If you could wish for one, from what instrument would that be?

(If you were about to say “guitar” here, then you should check out eye on the sparrow designs, who makes jewellery of recycled bass and guitar strings, and for a very good cause too!).