The death of John Topham, just before Christmas, has been made known today. The funeral will be held on Monday January 20th at Carmountside Crematorium at 1pm.
John Topham trained as a violin maker in the Fachschule für Geigenbau, Mittenwald and graduated in 1971. He worked with Dietrich Kessler at the shop of Edward Withers Ltd in London and made and restored many instruments of the violin and viol families. In 1979 he became self-employed and moved to Surrey outside London. In 1985 he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and science at the Open University in the UK.
In 1995 he began work on dendrochronological methods to investigate instruments of the violin and viol families, as well as lutes, guitars, and clavichords. He and Derek McCormick have had two papers published in the Journal of Archaeological Science about work done on British and Italian instruments, the latter including the 1716 Antonio Stradivari violin known as the “Messiah”. In 2007 he analyzed 20 Brescian instruments at an exhibition held in Brescia, and was asked by the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers to examine 40 instruments attributed to be from Venice from 1680 to 1790 featured in an exhibition held in Boston.
He has also done dendrochronological examinations for the auctioneers Sotheby’s and Bonhams in London, Christie’s in New York and Skinners in Boston; for institutions such as the Musée de la Musique in Paris and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford; and companies such as J. & A. Beare Ltd in London, Bein & Fushi in Chicago and Schmitt in Lyon as well as many other dealers and musicians from the UK and other European countries. He is in contact with members of the dendrochronological laboratories at Sheffield University and Queen’s University, Belfast, who have advised him in the acquisition and assessment of data from violins, He has now compiled a database comprising over 2,000 instruments, which has yielded nearly 4,000 sequences of data.
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