The Matterfine platform uses diverse curation and conservation technologies to engage with irreplaceable cultural artefacts and tradable rarities. These affordances provide a template for the distributed manufacturing of musical tools and material solutions in a circular economy.
We tell the story of an art object or instrument from its point of creation to the present, in multiple ways, bound together by a timeline metaphor.
With an expanding focus that includes rare stringed instruments and early 20th Century design, Matterfine curates and offers access to select rarities and irreplaceables. Value is added to each artwork and instrument through a detailed timeline that includes historical provenance, current condition maps and future performance/exhibition events.
A rare violin
Signed and dated. – On cardboard. – Mounted under passepartout.
Provenance: Buchheister estate.
The Matterfine laboratory, in active dialogue with museum researchers and restoration departments, creates conservation portfolios for each artwork on our platform using advanced technologies. These include spectroscopic pigment identification, micro CT scanning, acoustic analysis, photogrammetry and RTI imaging. The portfolio and timeline are part of the Matterfine digital records that enhance the work’s material and historical value.
A unique time stamp with micro detail of an instrument or artefacts surface details. UV light rendering for analysing varnish stratification.
Geometric form analysis using CT scan data.
CT scan for condition report and conservation protocol.
Matterfine has created a platform for distributed manufacturing that allows for the creation of conservatory quality, low-cost instruments to be crafted and used for music programs in underserved communities. The distribution of five axle CNC machines, pantographs and the digital recipe for an instrument based on the “Braga” Stradivari violin make it possible to turn local, recycled and repurposed materials into concert instruments that can be finished and played by children. This project, developed with the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, conducted by Matterfine and orchestrated by its partner The Open String, is an opening example of the possibilities for diffusing craft in the non-specialist creation of necessary goods, tools and fine instruments.
