From Sarajevo to Žabjak

Our Story

Three generations, one family, nearly a hundred years of work with wood, strings and sound. Our instruments are played in almost every Slovenian public music school and on stages abroad. As early as 1961, Igor Ozim toured Europe on a Demšar violin.

Blaž Demšar Sr.

1903–1981

First generation

Vilim Demšar

1937–2017

Second generation

Blaž Demšar Jr.

1980–

Third generation

First generation

Blaž Demšar Sr.

1903–1981

A carpenter by trade, a luthier at heart. Work took him from his native Gorenjska to Sarajevo, where in 1927 he committed to making violins. By 1938 he had made more than a hundred there, then moved the family to Ljubljana, to Žabjak. Self-taught, coolly received by the established local makers, and stubborn. Over his life he built around seven hundred instruments, with no help beyond his own sons.

Second generation

Vilim Demšar

1937–2017

Eldest son of Blaž Sr. A violinist and luthier at once: member of the Slovenian Philharmonic, violin teacher, master maker. After his father's death in 1981 he took over the workshop and made more than a thousand instruments in his lifetime. It was Vilim who made 'demšarica' a byword for quality. He handed the workshop to his nephew in 2015.

Making a quality violin is like playing the instrument well. It takes years of practice to know the wood, its working, its physical character.

Vilim Demšar · 1937–2017

Third generation

Blaž Demšar Jr.

1980–

Son of a cellist, grandson of the founder. A graduate engineer in wood science (Prešeren Prize, 2004), one of the few Slovenian luthiers with formal scientific training in wood. He has run the workshop alone since 2015. He picks every log himself; the wood waits in the attic until it is ready. If he closed the order book today, the existing commissions would keep him busy for another two years.

When an instrument first sings, that is the most beautiful moment.

Blaž Demšar Jr.

The process

From log to tone.

Top: Jelovica spruceLight yet resilient. It carries most of the sound.
Back, ribs, neck: Slovenian flamed mapleA hard, tightly figured wood that catches the tone and gives it back.
Violin build: 150+ hours of handworkFrom the first sketch to the last coat of varnish.
Cello build: 350+ hoursA larger body, the same care as a violin.
Machine time: A few minutes per instrumentMachines rough out the log; everything else is done by hand.
Annual output: 10–15 instrumentsMore than that simply doesn't leave the bench.

For the curious

The whole story, from Sarajevo to today.

From the first violin in Sarajevo to the workshop as it stands today. For anyone who wants the details.