Giovanni Lucchi

Giovanni Lucchi (21 August 1942, in Cesena, Italy – 2 August 2012, in Cremona, Italy) was an Italian bow maker noted for founding the first school of bow making in Italy.

Giovanni Lucchi

Background

Giovanni Lucchi trained as a double bassist, graduating from the Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini" in Pesaro in 1963. He worked for several years as a musician and instructor, and in 1971, he began constructing and restoring bows. He went to Brienz, Switzerland to apprentice under S. Finkel.

Career

In 1976, Lucchi founded a school for bowmaking in Cremona, Italy, where he taught courses in bow construction, maintenance and restoration, as well as style and design.

In 1983, Lucchi invented the Lucchi Meter, a device used to measure the speed of sound in wood that has become a standard tool not only for bow makers. The LucchiMeter is used to give the right price to the pieces of tonewood.

Lucchi was active within the community of luthiers and bow makers, holding various posts among professional societies and writing and speaking often in journals and conferences relating to the art.

A Giovanni Lucchi violin bow (ebony and silver mounted) was recently sold at auction for €12,100 on Catawiki.

Pupils

Maestro Lucchi Giovanni had a lot pupils, many of whom later became significant artists in their own right, here a little partial list: Emilio Slaviero, Daniel Tobias Navea Vera, Pietro Cavalazzi, Giorgio Grisales, Francisco Gonzalez Espinoza, Octavio Aranda, Andreas Grütter, Llorenç Fenollosa, Zheng Quan, Arturo Moreno, Juliane Schanzenbach, Paolo Pamiro, Andrea Proietti, Arturo Ponce, Gastaldi Marco Maria, Ivan Delgado e Michalis Pantelides.

Professional activities

• Secretary, Italian Association of Violin and Bow Makers (1991 to 1992)
• President, Violin and Bow Makers of the Artisans' Association of the Province of Cremona (1991 to 1998)
• Representative for Cremona to the Triennale Assembly (1995 - 1998)
• Member of the European Association of Master Violin and Bow Makers (1996 - 2000)

Publications

• Lucchi, Giovanni (2012). "Bowmaking Passion of a Lifetime - autobiography". Amazon. Fondazione Lucchi Cremona. ASIN B00FZ5SBTM. ISBN 9788890868344.
• Lucchi, Giovanni (October 2008). "Repairing a bow using a toothed patch". The Strad.
• Lucchi, Giovanni (June 2008). "LucchiMeter". The Strad.
• Lucchi, Giovanni (1998). "How to Visualize Il Bel Suono in Real Time". Journal of the Violin Society of America. 16 (3).
• Lucchi, Giovanni (1996). The Bow, Multimedia CD-ROM
• Lucchi, Giovanni (1988). "The Use of Empirical and Scientific Methods to Measure the Velocity of Propagation of Sound". Journal of the Violin Society of America. 9 (1).

Reputation

Lucchi's reputation was such that he was the bow maker for artists such as Mstislav Rostropovich, Pinchas Zukerman and Gary Karr, among others.

Lucchi Foundation

The “Fondazione Lucchi” comes from the desire to continue the work of the Bowmaker Maestro Giovanni Lucchi. Those who knew him knows he loved to share the culture of handcraft and his discoveries.
One of his great project was to create a foundation that would promote research, discovery about materials, knowledge of the violin bow.
We’ve made in his memory, because the cultural legacy he left us can get to many people in all parts of the world, as he wished.

External links

• Personal Page
• Lucchi Foundation Site
• "Archivio della liuteria cremonese".
• "Intervista ai Maestri della Liuteria Italiana - maestro Giovanni Lucchi".