My Red Violin

This is one of two violins which I own. I've played the piano, tuba and tenor sax for years, but having a go at the violin has been a recent challenge. And most interesting, as this is the most difficult instrument imaginable to play. Yet I love to crank up the CD and play along (when the house is otherwise empty, of course - for otherwise my music brings tears to people's eyes for all the wrong reasons).

The violin varnish is red and the violin, made in 1927, is one of many of beautiful vintage made by James Reynold Carlisle. Carlisle was a noted American violin maker, the brother-in-law of Victor Corsi (born Achilles Vittorio Coggi in 1893 in Supino, Italy).

James Reynold Carlisle worked in Cincinnati Ohio in the early 1900's and is said to have made some of the best American violins of that era.

Carlisle was born in Kentucky in 1886 and in 1920 was married to a woman named Blanche who was born in Ohio. They had a son Francis and a daughter Dorothy. In 1920 the family was living at 112 Chapel Street in Cincinnati. He died in 1962.