Word: violins
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There are, Gliga says, 200 steps involved in producing high-quality violins. Apart from the initial millwork, Gliga violins are handmade with tools often fashioned by the artisans themselves for the delicate shaping and carving of the instrument. Using teams of three or four people, each specialized in one step of the process, the Gliga factory can maximize its output while maintaining high quality. That teamwork is a variation on the accepted manufacturing theme: purists argue that the finest instruments are those made entirely by one master. Gliga says several people working together actually add to a violin's character...
Vasile Gliga is lost in concentration as he examines a beautifully made copy of a 1715 Stradivarius. Then his cell phone rings, spoiling the moment. That's the problem with running a business. Gliga has little time for what he loves best: the centuries-old craft of violin making. His 10-year-old violin-making company, known simply as the Gliga Group, is one of Romania's most successful family-owned concerns, employing some 1,200 people. "I started with two people making two violins a year. Now I have 500 making 3,000 a month," he says. "I didn...
...link between past and present is the special spruce and maple wood of the Transylvanian forests near the Gliga factory in Reghin. It is a resource so prized by violin makers that the nearby Gurghiului Valley is commonly known as Italian valley, after the luthiers who are said to have journeyed there from Cremona, Italy, the home of the masters, in search of perfect wood. According to Gliga, who grew up in the valley, the critical ingredient is the abundance of flamed maple (also called curly sycamore), the strikingly grained wood of choice for the back of violins. More specifically...
Communism's contribution to Gliga's success was the party's inability to set up a violin factory in Bucharest. The capital's facility was closed, and Reghin became the only town in the country where violins were made. As a result, the experts are all still there. "Skilled workmanship imbues a violin with special characteristics," says Gliga. He believes the unique qualities of the local wood coupled with the skill of his work force mean Gliga instruments can successfully compete with those being made by long-established European companies...
Vasile Gliga has come a long way since his first, illicit foray into business. While employed by Reghin's state-owned violin factory in the 1980s, he secretly made an instrument for himself at home. In 1990, following the Romanian revolution, he sold it to a dealer in the West. The $2,000 price, an undreamed-of fortune, not only bought him a secondhand auto, it also prompted a decision. Frustrated by what he calls the "old-style communist-worker mentality" ingrained in his factory colleagues, he quit his job, calculating that he and his wife, working from home, could...