Reporter of the Month
From the heart
By Andrea
My mother's father, Julian A. Lapinski, died long before my brother and I were born. He was a violin maker and brought his skills and exquisite
craftsmanship to the United States from Poland in the early 20th century. In his short lifetime--he died at age 43--he created only about a dozen instruments of which we have just one. We presume the rest are lost to history--a shame because he was a perfectionist who repaired other professional musicians' stringed instruments and created his own line--so we knew they had to be good.
Julian A. Lapinski studied the violins in the museums, developed tools to suit his standards, and stewed up his own varnishes, treating each piece of wood as if it were a diamond about to be cut. My mother grew up playing with the pegs and fingerboards and horsehair as if they were toys--and for her, they were.
We don't know much about how or where he learned his craft, or better stated, his art, but my mother does recall hearing him discuss technical details with his father, so we suspect violin-making was a tradition in the European branch of our family. The one Lapinski violin we own, though not stringed, is beautiful to look at, made of blonde tiger-striped wood, with exquisite inlay, all of it perfectly matched and coordinated, not a rough edge anywhere. My mother prefers to keep it protected in its original case, as is. All my life, I have wondered how it would play.
I am a musician and, though trained classically, veered off into all-American rock'n'roll, and I now have a roots-rock band. Recently, as I was updating my musical resume on my band's web site, I posted the one photograph that we have of young Lapinski in his shop. It's a copy of an old photo that ran in a local Bronx, New York, newspaper in the 1920s in which they wrote a piece about his work. I included the picture as part of my bio because he was an influence on me even in death--if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have chosen to study the violin--but I did, starting at age eleven and continuing through high
school--because I wanted to keep the family tradition alive. As I included the photo of him on the web site, I also posted pictures I took of our rare, singular Lapinski violin.
Within two weeks of the updated bio, I received an unusual e-mail from a stranger. This individual claimed that they, too, had a Lapinski violin. I was stunned. I told my mother. She paled and plunked down in a chair, and I sat down with her and told her the story. A professional violinist, the person explained that they had played years ago in a quartet of renown, that their father had bought the violin from a small shop in New York City. Out of curiosity and with some time available, the individual was Googling the name that was
signed on the label inside the violin. Extraordinarily, it appeared that
another of his creations actually existed!
One night, several weeks later, as I was performing in a local club with my band, an individual carrying a violin case walked into the room. As we finished our set and began the break, he walked right up to me while I was still onstage, introduced himself, opened the case, and presented a lovely, smooth, reddish-brown violin. Inside the violin, I could see a label--it read: "Julian A. Lapinski." The man was the son of the violinist in the quartet. He had brought the violin to me all the way from New Jersey, just so I might see it, hold it, play it, bring it to life. Their kindness will never be forgotten.
I placed the violin under my chin and slowly drew the bow across the strings. The sweetest, saddest, most mellow sound sang from its heart--it wasn't strident or screaming or harsh at all, but soulful, soft, gentle. I felt as if I was meeting my grandfather for the first time. I was actually holding a piece of my grandfather, a part of his creative mind, in my hands--here he was, more than 70 years after his death!
Who could ever have guessed that a tool as dry as the Internet could bring someone back to life, and bring something concrete of that person to a granddaughter he could never meet?
Pictures were taken, hugs were given, many smiles were passed around, but that one moment will be burned into my memory forever, the moment I met my grandpa--Julian A. Lapinski.
About Andrea
Andrea Dagmar Brown is a musician, artist, writer and a life-long resident of the Washington, DC area. A graduate of Towson University with post-graduate work at The American University, The University of Vermont and Antioch College, she has produced award-winning work in many media including video, photography, art, and music. See:
this for more about me
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