The violin-maker and teacher Juliet Barker, who has died aged 88, was a pioneer in her field, carving out a successful career when it was a highly unusual choice for a woman. In addition to her own output of instruments, she welcomed many hundreds of would-be makers to her thriving workshop in Cambridge, where she ran courses along the strict tenets of her training at the Mittenwald school in Bavaria.
This included leaving the workshop in good order at the end of the day with not a wood shaving on the floor. One of her first pupils, Colin Garrett, remembered that she insisted on the use of knives rather than chisels: “As a teacher she knew what she wanted and the way to produce a good result, and she was a particular stickler in her attitudes to thicknessing and arching.”
Barker’s teaching methods were consistent, with little flexibility. The maker and restorer Malcolm Siddall, a key member of Barker’s teaching panel, recalled: “She taught exactly the same throughout the years, with any other method initially suspect, although she became more open-minded if she saw the benefit, especially to beginners. She was an enabler and set standards that could be reached. There were more positives in her approach than negatives.”
This possibly inflexible attitude to teaching thousands of students down the years, mostly with no violin-making background (a mixture of students included amateur and professional players, Cambridge doctors, lawyers and academics), resulted in good, respectable outcomes in a world where amateur makers have traditionally received short shrift from professionals.
When Barker set off for Mittenwald in 1954 it was a small and rural school, though with a long and distinguished pedigree, and offered rigour and certainty. Most of the pupils were piece workers paying minimal fees, and the instruments made at the school were sold.
Barker remembered her teacher, Herr Karner, with warmth, and also that his priorities were his cows and hay crops. “In my second year he bought a tractor, and every time his son Hans, who had a first-class master’s certificate in making, drove past the school, he would stand up and look proudly out of the window,” she wrote in 2018, in the British Violin Making Association newsletter.
Key moments of her training stayed with her throughout her life, including the spirit varnish tuition by Anders Fürst – “I remember being told: ‘Schneller, schneller’ [quicker, quicker]” – and bridges were taught by Matthias Klotz, the last true descendent of the first Matthias Klotz. These are splendid links in key parts of the German violin-making tradition; her fellow pupils included such well-known names in the trade as Hugo Auchli, Jean Schmidt and Rolf Wunderlich.
Born in Cambridge, Juliet was the daughter of Sir Ernest Barker, a professor of political science at Cambridge University, and his second wife, Olivia (nee Horner). She was educated at the Perse school and Roedean, and learned the violin to a good standard. Thyroid problems affected her academic ambitions, and she was inspired to try instrument-making (and benefit from the mountain air) after talking to the venerable maker-dealers John and Arthur Beare, who commented that female violin makers had been seen in Mittenwald.
Barker came home after two years, prompted by her father’s ill health, returning only to complete her final exam.
She established a workshop in Cambridge, and, in 1960, following a suggestion from a customer, started violin-making evening classes at the newly named Cambridge College of Arts and Technology (now Anglia Ruskin University). Her initial class took six students, including Roland Gentle. He ultimately became an integral member of her teaching team, along with other former apprentices, and well-respected makers such as Siddall, Wilfred Saunders, Lydia and Jonathan Woolston, the bow maker Richard Wilson, and her own son Kit.
The first summer course took place in 1978; additional courses were added, fulfilling an active demand. New premises were opened in 1986, where Cambridge Violin Makers is still based.
Barker maintained her own output at the same time as running the classes. She was especially valued for her violas, often making in smaller sizes and her own models. She kept a “little green book” with all the details of her customers and key measurements, sometimes in a haphazard manner.
Barker met her future husband, James Beament, through playing – he was a double bassist as well as a Cambridge science professor. They were married in 1962 and their honeymoon included attending a scientific conference in Europe and then buying wood for her making.
In 1990 a concert celebrated 30 years of the workshop, with a string orchestra performing on instruments made in the classes. There were similar events on the 40th and 50th anniversaries. With Barker gradually becoming more frail, the responsibilities were assumed by Kit, although she continued to make, and take a lively interest in the teaching.
She enjoyed the company and skills of professional players too, and was surprised once on her birthday by the violinist Tasmin Little playing in her workshop. Little later invited her to display instruments at a festival she curated at Kings Place, in King’s Cross, north London, in 2011.
Barker was a founder trustee of the Rowan Armour-Brown Trust, a charity for the support of violin-making students. She wrote the book Violin Making: A Practical Guide, published in 2001, and in 2005 she was made MBE.
James died in 2005. Barker is survived by her two sons, Thomas and Kit.
• Sara Juliet Barker, instrument maker and teacher, born 10 June 1934; died 13 August 2022
