Build your own violin, cello or double bass
Build your own violin? You really can!
At the Dutch School of Violin Making in Makkum, you will be taken through the building process step by step. You can come and build throughout the year. The school is open three days a week and we organise 10-12 building weekends a year. And then, of course, our summer weeks!
Read more
The training to become a violin maker
Become an assistant violin maker? That is possible in Makkum at the Dutch School of Violin Making. For 3 days a week, you can complete your training in 1 year. It can also be done part-time. Read more
Restoring or repairing your old instrument?
Does your old string instrument need a restorations and are you a bit handy? Then come and restore the instrument under the guidance of our teachers! Read moreA selection of our instruments
Agenda
Throughout the year, lessons are given in Makkum on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays during the week. The lessons on Tuesday are intended for starting builders.
The number of participants per day is limited to 12 (and on Tuesdays to 6) in order to give each builder sufficient time and attention. Registration takes place via the registration form, admission takes place in order of registration.
Weekly lessons trimester 1
Slijpweekend (light)
Weekly lessons trimester 1
Register
Besides our summer course weeks and our course weekends, we also have our weekly courses on Wednesday and Friday. You can register for half-days and day when still available.
Dirk Jacob Hamoen
The founder and inspiring associate professor of the NVS (born 1949) studied Musicology in Utrecht, specializing in musical instruments. By working at the Bouwerscontact (Vereninging Huismuziek) and making a violin himself, he decided in 1985 as an autodidact to promote his passion into a serious profession. In 2004, he got the grip of controlling the sound and he started the first summer course of the Dutch Violin Building School, where he can use his didactic skills with great pleasure to this day.
Rob Stemerding
As an enthusiastic amateur set builder & designer and board member of Houtstad IJlst, he is the wood connoisseur par excellence. Highly valued and almost indispensable assistant of DJ, in other words: his right hand. As a violin making teacher, partly still in training, but in the meantime the NVS would no longer know how it would be done without him. In addition to teaching, restoring instruments and hairing bows, he gives the school an increasingly beautiful look by refurbishing and furnishing the rooms.
Margo Konings
Wife of Dirk Jacob.
In 2004 it was her idea to organize the first summer week ever for violin making.
For years she was the mainstay, hostess, cook, mother, as it were, of the steadily growing school.
Now officially employed by the NVS as an administrative source of information and rock in the surf.
The photos on this site were made and made available by the student builders of the Dutch Violin Building School. For which big thanks!