Violin Sculpture

From The Master’s Hands” commemorates the woodworking heritage and arts’ history of the Catawba Valley area. This unique work of art was conceived and sculpted by Eddie Hamrick and presented, as a gift, to The Western Piedmont Symphony as a means to raise funds to further advance artistic musical excellence in the Unifour area.

“From The Master’s Hands” captures in minute detail the intrinsic relationship between the craftsman and the musician. The sculpture, created from the woods of nature, depicts the progressive component construction of a violin from conceptual drawings to the completed instrument. Wood carving, lathe turning and hand sculpturing were employed and over 300 hours dedicated to the sculpture’s creation.

The violin diagrams are reproduced from actual plans of Antonio Stradivari, the greatest violin maker of all times. The tools are exact, working 18th Century reproductions – bow saw, lathe, planes, woodcarving chisel and marking gauges – the instruments of the woodworker used to create the ultimate masterpiece within the progression, the violin.

The base of “From The Master’s Hands” is a reproduction of a 16th Century violin maker’s work bench. Overall dimensions of the sculpture measure 40 inches in height and 22 inches in width. Both foreign and domestic woods, those same woods prized by the furniture industry to create articles of function and beauty, were employed abundantly in the creation of “From The Master’s Hands’: Maple, Walnut, Ash, Cherry, Ebony, Carpathian Elm, Teak, Paduck, Rosewood, Norwegian Spruce, Mahogany, Pecan, Hickory, Willow and Pernambuco represent the combination of flexibility, strength and beauty required by the artist to create this masterpiece.