Our Makers
Grace Albert Strings was founded to promote living, contemporary makers. You’ll find both established, award-winning makers, and prodigious up-and-coming makers in our line-up. If you have any questions, just ask! We are happy to help you find your dream instrument or bow.
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Hannah Fenn
Hannah Fenn is a seventh generation maker from the Gläsel family from Markneukirchen. She was first immersed into the violin world at a young age by her mother who would import and wholesale strings and violin accessories from their home.…
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Christopher Jacoby
Christopher Jacoby is Workshop Manager at Potter’s Violins in Takoma Park, MD. He studied violin making at the Violin Making School of America, and repair and restoration under Peter Prier. Chris edits The Scroll magazine for The Violin Society of America, and is a regular…
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Émile-Auguste Ouchard
Émile-Auguste Ouchard (1900-1969) Bowmaker Émile Auguste Ouchard first studied with his father Émile François at the Mirecourt shop of Cuniot-Hury and began to assist him around 1913. Father and son continued to work together after Émile Francois opened his own shop in 1923, and Émile Auguste…
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Éric Gagné
Éric Gagné is a bowmaker based in Montreal, Canada. He has received multiple Certificates of Merit from the Violin Society of America’s International Violin and Bowmaking Competition (2018, 2016, 2014), and is a member of the American Federation of Violin and…
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Steven Beckley
Steven Beckley was born in Menlo Park California in 1955. Always tinkering, he had an early fascination for musical instruments and working with wood. At the age of nineteen he began professionally repairing fretted instruments. As his skills unfolded and grew,…
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David Samuels
Growing up playing in his family string quartet, David Samuels graduated from Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, where he studied viola, piano and conducting. He began his violin-making studies in 1981 with Amnon Weinstein in Tel-Aviv, and went on to Paris to…
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Jordan Hess
Jordan Hess is a young violin maker from a small farm in east central Indiana, who first began making instruments when he was nine. Now based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Jordan makes his violins based on traditional Cremonese working…
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Andrew Carruthers
A native of Oxfordshire, England, Andrew Carruthers worked at the Lawrence Berkeley Research Labs in California before deciding to follow his passion for building stringed instruments. Returning to the UK, he studied at the Welsh School of Violin Making and Repair,…
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Lynn Hannings
Lynn Hannings started studies of bow rehair in high school, and soon after pursued studies in bow making. She studied with, worked with, and served as teaching assistant to William Salchow, and now operates a thriving bow shop in her home…
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Gilles Nehr
Gilles Nehr was born in the southwestern region of France. At 17 years old, he became fascinated with the profession of his cousin, bowmaker Jean-Pascal Nehr. Gilles Nehr joined him in Marseille as an apprentice and graduated from Mirecourt at the…