String instruments have always been beautiful – to see and to hear. They have a stylish, elegant shape. Good violins aren’t built by machines like identical cars in a factory: each one is crafted by hand out of top-quality wood and carefully varnished. Old instruments were sometimes even decorated with beautiful patterns.

The shape of the violin family instruments is a bit like the female body. Many of its parts have the same names as parts of the human body: belly, neck, back, shoulders.

All string instruments are ‘chordophones’: the sound is made by vibrating strings that are stretched between two points.