ALBURGH, Vt. (WCAX) – Melissa Collins has loved music for a long time.
“I just love making things and I love creating things,” she says with a smile. But, it wasn’t until more recently that she realized that making instruments is her real love.
“Mostly violins, violas, cellos. I work on basses, I don’t make them,” she says.
The backstory of this business brings us to Salt Lake City, where Collins worked in a shop doing repairs and restorations on all kinds of instruments. As she honed her craft, she decided to go to violin-making school.
“The way my brain works, I’ve always been really interested in music and science. And then I learned that building instruments is something that you could do that combined both of those things,” she explains.
When she moved to Vermont two years ago, she decided to take up her craft full-time. Operating under her own name, this luthier does her work in the serenity of the Champlain Islands. While birds sing their songs outside, strings are the thing inside.
“A lot of attention to detail. It’s being really careful with the wood that I choose. It’s just kind of everything all together,” she says.
Collins says while the science behind making instruments is largely the same, the finesse between makers is expansive. Different luthiers have different techniques, and for that reason, Collins says she’s always learning. And, there’s plenty to learn, as this craft requires a wide skillset. It all starts with a chunk of wood.
“It’s really amazing to take something that looks like part of a tree, and then turning it into an instrument. And being there for the whole process of splitting that, turning that into the top and back, just like going through the whole process and creating something,” she says.
Collins mastered the ins and outs of splitting and planing the spruce and maple to create the instrument. But, she also takes it a step further.
“I grow a lot of the plants that I’ll use to make pigments that go into the varnish,” she says, also explaining that she sources as much as she can from local farms and makers. It’s all in an effort to ensure her work looks sharp and hits the right notes.
It’s certainly a labor of love, with multiple projects underway at any given time. Collins says something like a cello can take upward of 400 hours to complete, but her work is never really done.
“I’m happy when it just is an instrument that feels good to play, it feels easy to play. And sounds good,” she says.
Collins mostly sells through shops but does take commissions. She also has work in a traveling exhibit featuring female luthiers. That exhibit lands in New York City next month.
It’s safe to say that Collins has found her forte making stringed instruments, here, in Vermont.