He's gone from carving stone animals on his father's farm to one of Britain's most distinguished violin makers, but now a progressive disease is threatening his career. Nick Morrison reports.

LATER this year, Roger Hansell will give a talk at an international conference of violin makers. He says there are no secrets to violin making: all you need is a good eye. But in choosing a subject for his talk, he gives an insight into what is clearly still a very arcane world. There may not be any secrets, but there are things people don't know.

"I'm sure they wanted me to talk about antiquing, but I'm not going to," he says. "I have decided to give a talk about Violin Making: Art or Industry.

"In all kinds of ways, people are seeking to know how those that are more successful at antiquing do it. Often they don't want to ask directly, but it is always what they want to know."

Antiquing - applying and treating varnish to make a new instrument look like an old one - is clearly the Holy Grail for violin makers. Opinion is divided on whether it affects the sound, but there's no doubt that it's what the violinists themselves want.

The result is that the international fraternity of violin makers is seemingly anxious to discover what techniques everybody else uses, but without letting on that they're interested. It's perhaps appropriate for a skill that reached its height in days of intrigue and scheming of the early 18th century, when the great Antonio Stradivari was in his pomp.

"I haven't talked in detail to other colleagues about antiquing," says Roger. "I don't know whether they want to hang on to how they do it or if they think, like I do, that there are no secrets and you just have to have a good eye."

The violins produced in Roger's workshop in the Wensleydale town of Leyburn in North Yorkshire are prized for their antiquing. But it's not just a matter of applying a few coats of varnish and then sandpapering it down. The best antiquing aims to mimic the patterns of wear of the 18th century, when the instruments were kept in cases lined with coarse felt, which marked the violin when it went in and out.

His reticence over how he does it even extends within his own workshop, albeit subconsciously. He relates how a desire to understand his techniques has frustrated Sam, one of the three people who work with him.

'On the last violin we did, Sam was with me when I was putting the varnish on. He was away for one day and he said during that day it went from looking like a new violin to looking like an old one," he chuckles. "It could well be that on that day I felt more relaxed to do it."

The story of how he came to make violins is of a collision between a strong visual sense and a love of music, underpinned by an aptitude for delicate handwork.

As a child, growing up on his family farm near Swainby in North Yorkshire, Roger was always making things, painting and carving animals out of stones. He moved to London to study art, and there fell in with a group of musicians, started going to concerts, watching rehearsals and listening to them talk about how one instrument differed from another.

As his interest in music, and the violin in particular grew, he wandered into a museum where a Stradivari violin, he thinks from 1699, was displayed.

"It was a perfectly formed thing. There was no looking back, I just had to make one. That violin had a big impact on me," he says. "In woodworking terms it is not all that complex, and the problems of violin making are ones I felt qualified to solve."

An encounter with Charles Beer, an influential figure in the world of violin making, also proved key. Beer told him to look at the architecture of violins.

"To begin with I was not quite sure what he meant, I was not sure I could identify architecture in violins. But I studied old instruments and worked hard and it all made perfect sense, the overall flow of shapes and the construction of the form," he says.

"Now, I'm absolutely obsessed with the violin's look. The way they sound is seen as a separate thing from the way they look, but actually the two are absolutely tied. You can look at the shape of a violin and predict the way it is going to sound."

Roger, now 44, eschewed formal training, and instead worked with musicians, asking them what they wanted and studying the violin to see how that effect was produced. He went to live in Italy after his art course finished, and spent time talking to violin makers.

"The difficulty is not making a violin, it is making a really good one, and no amount of training would have helped me. You have to have a sharp eye, not just in details, but for harmony and architecture, and also a strong ear for sound, to make it a really good violin.

All his instruments - he also makes violas and cellos - are made to order, taking around six to seven months and costing upwards of £10,000 each. He listens to the customer's requirements, asks what sort of sound they want, and then modifies the instrument accordingly. This, to come back to the title of his September talk, involves the risks associated with art, rather than with industry.

"The difference between people making things in a heavily regulated way in industry is that engineers have one attitude to risk, artists have another. The engineer tries to eradicate risk completely, the artist tries to embrace it and harness it," he says. "The only way to simulate the wear on a violin is to do something that has huge risk involved. It has taken hundreds of hours to make the violin and it would be easy to be too precise. The secret is to take risks."

He's now been making violins for 25 years, originally in London and for the last 18 years in Leyburn. He also started to make fittings for violins, the tuning pegs and chin rests, normally added separately, a decision made in response to his diagnosis with multiple sclerosis 12 years ago. Roger has the progressive form of the disease, meaning he does not have remissions. After the disease affected his senses in his 20s and then his mobility - he can walk, although with difficulty, and generally uses a wheelchair - he lives in the knowledge that his ability to make violins may be cut short at any time.

"The thing I have found with MS is its unpredictability. A long time ago I replaced the tactile work with eye work but there are some parts of violin making I just can't do any more," he says.

"I feel quite comfortable as far as the fittings go, but I do find it difficult with the instruments because my condition can change through the course of the day. It never goes away, or very rarely goes away.

"Sensibly, I would hang up my tools and be done with it, but that would be an extremely negative outlook. I would like to go on and I will go on."

MS may yet still claim them, but for now Roger still has the techniques which make his violins sought after by professionals all over the world, the secrets that are not quite secrets.

"There are all kinds of little secrets," he concedes, before correcting himself: "They're not secrets: it's just that not everybody knows them."