Reverberations

Years ago, when I was studying in Heidelberg, Germany, a friend of mine found a broken violin in his basement and offered it to me. The tailpiece was missing, and the back plate had separated from the body. The instrument wasn’t valuable, but I was fascinated by its scroll — a stylized lion’s head with watchful eyes — and the rope purfling that shone through the layers of dust. If restored, how would it sound? What could I learn about it?

I thought of that old violin as I read the first chapter of Joseph Pearson’s My Grandfather’s Knife. The historian opens with his early childhood impressions of the weapon, which hung on a wall in the basement of his grandparents’ house in Edmonton. Pearson’s object is more menacing than mine, but the ornamentation was similarly evocative: an eagle-head pommel glaring with an ever-vigilant eye; a glinting hilt, carved with laurels and...