By Sam McLaren Blade | From the January/February 2026 issue of Strings
London, late 19th and early 20th centuries. The golden age of the violin dealer. This is the landscape in which the Voller Brothers—William, Alfred, and Charles—were active. Among the most fascinating makers in history, the Voller Brothers developed various ways of helping to sate the global demand for old Italian instruments, which was flourishing due to the increasingly connected business routes developing across Europe and spilling into America.
Advertisement
I have always found the Voller Brothers and their work fascinating, but an instrument fell into my hands recently that reignited this interest because it still carried the Vollers’ own original, handwritten label atop the printed Ferdinando Gagliano label. We often think of the Vollers as treading the line between talented copyists and outright fraudsters—even criminals—yet this was an honest copy, and as convincing as those made by Vuillaume or John Lott II, the giants on whose shoulders the Vollers stood.
Roughly a century after their exploits, enough time has passed that stories of the Vollers that created resentment, anger, and even court cases are now thought of as amusing anecdotes, representative of a dishonest time in the violin world that we all strive to leave in the past. The British Violin Making Association (BVMA) published an excellent book on the Voller Brothers that is deliberately noncommittal in its assessment of their morality. As the archivist for W. E. Hill & Sons, I wanted a contemporary evaluation of the Vollers: At the time they were working, were they seen as talented artisans who were taken advantage of by big-name dealers, or did people think that they deliberately tried to pass off their own copied works as originals?
To investigate this dilemma further, I scoured the diaries of Arthur Frederick Hill for insight. Arthur’s writings create a strong impression that he believed it was the responsibility of W. E. Hill & Sons—possibly alone—to maintain and uphold ethical business practices within a period of tumultuous trade. His views on the Vollers are mostly damning but do occasionally express a glimmer of respect for the Vollers’ craftsmanship, and even sympathy for their circumstances.
The Vollers’ violin-making lives started in Notting Hill in West London where, as student musicians, they developed a relationship with George Chanot. An article in the Daily Chronicle states that “Mr. Chanot has an extraordinary idea of commercial morality . . . but we regret to say that his views are shared by a large number of traders.”This early encounter with Chanot, it would seem, may not have set the Voller Brothers’ moral compasses to true north . . .
Advertisement
In the time that the Voller Brothers were active, there was a significant financial incentive to “discover” a “previously unknown” Stradivari, either that had “just arrived from the continent” or “had been found in a deceased relative’s attic.” These were explanations that would have be equally familiar to Arthur Hill and many violin dealers today. For a sense of scale, Stradivari’s instruments were starting to sell for over £1,000—a house in West London could be purchased for half the price, at around £500.
This was also a time when the “genuine copy” was in vogue. The French tradition of Pique, Lupot, and Vuillaume had created a market for instruments that resembled the originals, and even W. E. Hill & Sons brought over violin makers from Mirecourt to staff their workshops in Hanwell in West London. Fellow violin dealer George Hart decided that he wanted in on the action. From the mid-1880s, Hart had the Voller Brothers make copies of fine original instruments, including the “Betts” Stradivari and “Leduc” Guarneri del Gesù. These instruments functioned as an homage—always labelled as being an exact copy. They were designed to imitate but never deceive.
However, this partnership was short-lived, as around 1900, the relationship between Hart and the Vollers seems to have fallen apart, and no instruments with a Hart label were ever found after this point. One wonders, did the Vollers realise that they could make more money passing off their copies as originals?
We get an insight into the Vollers’ business practices by their associations. An example is Dr. George Duncan, a less-than-scrupulous violin-maker-turned-dealer, who saw what the Hills, Harts, Beares, Vuillaumes, and others managed to achieve selling old instruments. Without a reliable stock of genuine “Cremonas” of his own, he decided to turn to the Vollers for their assistance. Duncan and the Vollers often knowingly passed off a composite instrument as the original—and had torn apart an original in the process of doing so.
In 1914, Arthur Hill described a violin that had been brought in for appraisal: “A strange American . . . called yesterday with a Strad violin to show us, and I saw at a glance that only the back was original. I recognised the back, but not the other parts which have been added to it by the Vollers since it was ours some 25 years ago . . . Silvestre [another French violin dealer] sold it to Dr. Duncan—a man who, I think, must be held responsible for a great deal—and he no doubt employed the Vollers to make the present parts.”
Advertisement
An ethical question stands: Is it worse to create an out-and-out fake or to take an original, break it into its constituent parts, forge the rest, and create three “masterpieces” from one?
W. E. Hill & Sons’ very own Arthur and his brother Alfred Ebsworth Hill ran into the same problem whilst travelling Europe extensively on behalf of the firm in efforts to find instruments: “Another letter from Alfred at Florence in which he speaks of coming across no less than four imitation violin copies of Gragnani made by Voller. I have no doubt that Dr. Duncan is the channel by which they have gone to Italy.”The Vollers, via Duncan, were complicit in these fakes disseminating through the very city in which Gragnani himself had trained. Similarly, Arthur Hill was shown a violin certified by another dealer as a Giuseppe Guarneri “filius Andreae,” about which he wrote: “It looks like one of Dr. Duncan’s importations, and as if it had been touched up by the Vollers, clever workmen here who he has no doubt largely employed in making up shams.”
One of the more contentious cases of these Voller “masterpieces” arose in 1897, when a longstanding customer of W. E. Hill & Sons named Mr. Murray brought in a “Strad” violin (purchased from Duncan) for an appraisal. Murray arrived at Hill accompanied by his solicitor and a private detective; the violin had cost him £1,200. Upon appraising the instrument, Arthur Hill concluded for Murray that “no part of it [the instrument] is by the great maker, or at all like his work.” The following year, Murray took Duncan to court over the instrument and asked W. E. Hill & Sons to be an expert witness in the case. However, proving the Vollers’ and Duncan’s misdeeds in public didn’t seem to be high on Arthur’s agenda. He commented that although “we know Dr. Duncan to be a rogue, and that he has been associated with the Vollers for years, getting them to make sham fiddles, it would of course be difficult to prove this, and the onus of doing it would be very great. We are therefore going to think it over and see if we can accept this responsibility . . .”Realistically, despite W. E. Hill & Sons’ prestige, in a court of law, one man’s word against another’s couldn’t stop the “misdealings” of Duncan or the Vollers.
Advertisement
Though Arthur Hill detested being swept up in the Vollers’ dealing and “sham fiddle” antics, he did seem to have a level of admiration for the quality of their work. In various diary entries, he writes that “they are talented and clever . . .”and that “their talent was misapplied . . .”, appearing regretful that the
Vollers’ talents and careers had been“devoted to making nothing but shams.”
As well as being talented luthiers, the Vollers were also skilled painters and sculptors. A small bronze exists of the cellist Piatti and another of Antonio Stradivari himself, both made by William Voller. Their watercolors of instruments also show remarkable talent and artistry. It turns out though that, according to Arthur Hill, it wasn’t just violins that the Vollers were interested in faking. In 1917, Arthur wrote that the Vollers had taken original copper plates of artist George Morland’s (1763–1804) engravings and had“cleverly reproduced from them prints in colour, which they passed off as originals . . . That the Vollers made money by fiddle forgeries we have long been aware, but it was news to me that they had done the same with engravings.”
To me, it is fascinating to see the Vollers through the eyes of Arthur Hill, their most vehement critic. From reading and interpreting’s Arthur’s texts, his problem was clearly never with the Vollers’ skill, rather he admonished them for their application of it. The Vollers were essentially musical mercenaries—willing to do anything necessary for a pretty price, and, in Arthur’s opinion, if you hired these mercenaries, then you were guilty by association.
Over the last century, opinions have been split over the morals of these brothers—whether they were simply expert copyists whose instruments were then fraudulently passed off as originals by unethical dealers, or whether they themselves perpetrated the forgeries. What is certain is that breaking a single fine instrument into multiple parts and faking the rest of the composite was, and still is, a heinous act. And the fact that they extended their unique talents to art fraud shows a self-serving immoral intent. The Voller Brothers had the most remarkable lives. They often lived under the radar, choosing others to front their work rather than to have a significant public presence, adding to their mystique and historical charm. Whatever the ethical quandary, one thing that even Arthur Hill could acknowledge was that their talent spoke for itself.
Advertisement
