Vincenzo Panormo

Vincenzo Trusiano Panormo (born November 30, 1734 in Monreale , † 1813 in London ) was an Italian violin maker who worked in Italy, later in France and finally in Ireland and England.

Live and act

Vincenzo Trusiano came from Monreale near Palermo (Latin: Panormo) in Sicily, hence this addition to his name. As a young man (around 1750) he settled in Naples and received his training as a violin maker there, possibly with the Gagliano family . Probably for economic reasons, Panormo worked in Marseille in the early 1770s , but at least in Paris from 1773 , with the influence of Nicolas-Augustin Chappuy . The instruments he made there show the influence of Stradivarius and are on par with their best Parisian colleagues in terms of quality and choice of materials. After the revolution broke out, he moved to Dublin in 1789 , where he worked with Thomas Perry (around 1744-1818). There he is said to have built some violin floors from the wood of a billiard table.

Violin sheet, Vincenzo Panormo

In 1791 he settled in London, where he was the first worker (workshop manager) in the workshop of the violin shop John Betts until his death and also built his own instruments. More violins, violas, cellos and basses have survived from this period than from the Paris and Dublin years. They show strong Italian influences, especially from Stradivari and Amati , whose instruments Panormo knew well. In particular, he provided the bottoms of his violins with pins at the top and bottom inside the inlay to connect them to the blocks. Experts see him as one of the best, if not the best, English violin makers of his time. Because Panormo did not label all of his instruments with labels, works from other origins, sometimes with false labels, are often assigned to him; all known pieces of paper from the London era are handwritten. Instruments from the early period are branded or labeled with the city arms of Palermo next to his name. His instruments were often made of woods growing in England and the varnish was of better quality than is usual in England.

The opinion has also been expressed that he worked for a time at Bergonzi in Cremona; there is no evidence of this. Panormo's influence on contemporary and later London violin makers is great. He contributed to the spread of the Cremonese style in London.

Several of his sons also became violin makers, above all Joseph Panormo (around 1767–1837), who assisted his father in his work from 1800 at the latest, George (also Georges on slips of paper) Panormo (1776–1852), whose instruments were built according to Stradivarius and who was also successful as a bow maker in the workshop of his brother Louis, as well as Louis Panormo (around 1784–1862), he was best known for his Spanish guitars.

A cello by Vincenzo Panormo from 1775 is played by the Italian cellist Enrico Bronzi .

literature

• Towry Piper: Violins and Violin Manufacture from the Death of Stradivari to the Present Time, . Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 1898, Vol. 25,1, pp. 97-114.
• John Dilworth, Father Figure and Future Generations , in: theStrad , April and May 1986.
• The British Violin, the Catalog of the 1998 Exhibition '400 Years of Violin & Bow Making in the British Isles' edited by British Violin Making Association, 2000.

Web links

• Short biography and list of instruments on Cozio.com

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Irish Times, William Galland Stuart, September 21, 1973 (English)
2. ^ MGG , 2nd edition, vol. 13, columns 75 and 76.
3. ↑ Tim Ingles, Four Centuries of Violin Making - Fine Instruments from the Sotheby's Archive , Cozio Pub., 2006 ISBN 0976443112 (English)
4. ^ ^{A b} John Dilworth, Father Figure and Future Generations , in: theStrad , April and May 1986
5. ^ The Strad , October, (1996)
6. ↑ Willibald Leo von Lütgendorff-Leinburg : The violin and lute makers from the Middle Ages to the present, supplementary volume by Thomas Drescher, pp. 455–457, Tutzing, 1990
7. ↑ Enrico Bronzi on concertoclassics.it, accessed on July 11, 2017.