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In Focus: 1821 violin by Carl Nicolaus Sawicki

2026-01-02T10:09:00

Back motif

Wolfhart Schuster an instrument by the Polish maker

Carl Nicolaus Sawicki is regarded as Vienna’s pre-eminent luthier of the early 19th century. He was born in 1793 in Stanisław (now Ivano-Frankivsk) in western Ukraine, which at that time was part of the Austrian empire. However, he came from a noble Polish family, and sometimes wrote his labels in Polish. He studied theology in Lemberg (now Lviv) where he lived in the house of a violin maker – which influenced his choice of career. He arrived in Vienna in 1818, where he worked with both Franz Werner and Franz Geissenhof. The 1821 violin shown here cemented his reputation as one of Vienna’s pre-eminent luthiers…

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