In the medieval Italian city that gave the world the famed Stradivarius violin, Bill Whitaker finds artisans still at work trying to replicate the precious sound of the million-dollar instrument known ...

At a Sotheby's auction, a violin handcrafted in 1714 by the famous Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari was sold for $11.25 million by the New England Conservatory (NEC) in Boston. The proceeds from the ...

A good violin depends on the expertise of the violin maker, but also on the quality of the wood that is used. Professor Francis W. M. R. Schwarze of th Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science ...

Violin makers routinely finish their instruments with a thick coat of varnish, the better to protect and preserve the wood. Now Swiss scientists claim that this varnish also plays a role in the ...

Prof Francis Schwarze, of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials, Science and Technology, has succeeded in modifying wood used for violin-making through treatment with two kinds of fungi: ...