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Making Matters: The curious case of Knute Reindahl’s 1905 violin

2026-11-06T10:22:51.727

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An impressively carved violin from 1905 led HyeonJeong Kim on a journey to discover more about its maker and dedicatee

A few years ago I came across a violin made by an American luthier whose name, Knute Reindahl, was unfamiliar to me at the time. What immediately caught my eye was the scroll. Within this small space, Reindahl had carved an exquisitely detailed portrait head of Joseph Joachim, one of the great violinists of the 19th century. On the back of the violin was a remarkably delicate portrait of a young boy, rendered almost like a photograph. The boy turned out to be Franz von Vecsey, the legendary Hungarian violinist and a pupil of Joachim, then only twelve years of age…

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