N early forty years after he bought it - and further decades since his mentor, Mathias Dahl, established it in the Handicraft Guild on Tenth Street in downtown Minneapolis - Robert Black's shop works like a time machine: enter it and feel the craft of instrument repair as it has been practiced in this city for more than 100 years.
Black focuses on repair, fixing a range of stringed instruments and bows for musicians and collectors. That’s the part of the business he learned, beginning when he was 14. His father had worked with Dahl in the 1940s and they remained friends for the rest of their lives. The elder Black brought his son by the shop and Robert was entranced on first sight. He began hanging around the shop like its instruments and tools until Dahl put him to work, first sweeping the floors, then doing simple repairs. Like his mentor, Black learned fast.
Today, customers and visitors come from all parts of the world, from the Alaska resident who brings an original Dahl violin back to him for tuning, to curious tourists, like the one from Prague, who perused the shop with a nostalgic eye before telling Black that Dahl Violin reminded him of an old workshop in the Czech Republic. New Yorkers say that this is what their city used to be like.
Click the ARTICLE tab above for the full story by Kris Palmer. Photos at right by Jerry Lee.
By Kris Palmer
“The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated.”
Robert Black’s eyes are blue rather than grey, and he seldom speaks in abstract terms. Yet the owner of Dahl Violin in downtown Minneapolis shares with H.G. Wells’ protagonist a living knowledge of days gone by. Even now, nearly forty years after he bought it—and further decades since his mentor, Mathias Dahl, established it in the Handicraft Guild on Tenth Street—his shop works like a time machine: enter it and feel the craft of instrument repair as it has been practiced in this city for more than 100 years.
Techniques and tools Black relies on were passed to him by Dahl or Dahl’s predecessor, Halvor Blakkestad, who came to the United States in 1875. Blakkestad was an accomplished musician who also repaired the instrument he played. Dahl is best known for the violins, a couple hundred, that he made under his own name. The accompanying photo of a violin standing on its side is one of those pieces, in front of a framed advertisement for a young Dahl’s handiwork. His masterful creations sold for $250 to $350 in the 1930s. It will take $15,000 or more to own one of the finest domestically produced violins of the Twentieth Century today.
Black focuses on repair, fixing a range of stringed instruments and bows for musicians and collectors.
That’s the part of the business he learned, beginning when he was 14. His father had worked with Dahl in the 1940s and they remained friends for the rest of their lives. The elder Black brought his son by the shop and Robert was entranced on first sight. He began hanging around the shop like its instruments and tools until Dahl put him to work, first sweeping the floors, then doing simple repairs. Like his mentor, Black learned fast.
Yet events that would define his career moved faster still. While still a teen, Black was hit by a car and suffered a broken leg. Not long afterward, Dahl passed away. At that time, most of Black’s friends were traveling the country or the world in search of adventure. But Black had a prospect they did not: with the settlement money from his accident, he had enough to buy the shop Dahl used to build his instruments and his legacy.
Just 19 years old, Black picked up the tools of his trade—some of which Blakkestad had owned since the American Civil War was a fresh memory. And Black has maintained the shop, and the craft, ever since.
Customers and visitors come from all parts of the world, from the Alaska resident who brings an original Dahl violin back to him for tuning, to curious tourists, like the one from Prague, who perused the shop with a nostalgic eye before telling Black that Dahl Violin reminded him of an old workshop in the Czech Republic.
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