About

The Story of a Chinese Master and His Workshop

Ming Jiang Zhu Violins is the international brand of the Ming Jiang Zhu Workshop (朱明江提琴工作室), a handmade violin atelier founded in Guangzhou, China in 1991. The brand bears the name of its founder, Master MING-JIANG ZHU (朱明江, 1956–2014), the most decorated Chinese luthier in the history of the Violin Society of America International Competition.

To date, instruments from this workshop have earned 27 awards at the VSA International Competition — 21 of them personally by Master Ming-Jiang Zhu himself, including 2 Gold Medals (1994, 2006) and 2 Silver Medals (1996, 2000), with the remaining 6 earned by his students working in the same workshop. His work was profiled in TIME Magazine's "The Most Influential People in America" special issue on April 21, 1997. In 2008, he became the third Chinese luthier ever admitted to the Entente Internationale des Luthiers et Archetiers d'Art (EILA), the world's most exclusive association of master string-instrument makers.

Today, the workshop is led by his first cousin (paternal cousin, 堂弟 in Chinese — son of his father's brother) and direct student, Master WEI-XIAN ZHU (朱卫宪), the representative figure of the third generation of the Southern (Guangzhou) school of Chinese violin-making.

The Founder: Ming-Jiang Zhu (1956–2014)

Ming-Jiang Zhu was born in 1956. He apprenticed under Liang Guohui (梁国辉), the foremost figure of the first generation of the Southern (Guangzhou) school of Chinese violin-making, and founded his own workshop in Guangzhou in 1991.

His record at the Violin Society of America International Competition — the most respected juried competition for new violins, violas, and cellos in the world — comprises:

  • Gold Medal, 1994
  • Silver Medal, 1996
  • Silver Medal, 2000
  • Gold Medal, 2006
  • 17 Certificates of Merit (multiple years)

This total of 21 personal VSA awards is, to the workshop's knowledge, the highest count ever earned by a single Chinese luthier. To place this record in context: a VSA Gold Medal requires an instrument to score within one point of perfection on a hundred-point scale, evaluated separately for workmanship and tone — a standard so demanding that the VSA reserves the right to award no Gold Medal at all in any given category in any given year.

In April 1997, TIME Magazine recognized Ming-Jiang Zhu in its special issue "The Most Influential People in America," published on April 21, 1997. The recognition acknowledged his role in elevating the international standing of contemporary Chinese violin-making at a time when the field was still little known outside Asia.

Eleven years later, in 2008, Ming-Jiang Zhu was admitted to the Entente Internationale des Luthiers et Archetiers d'Art (EILA), based in Brussels. EILA is a closed, invitation-only association of master luthiers worldwide. New members are admitted only by unanimous approval from existing members. Ming-Jiang Zhu was the third Chinese luthier ever admitted in the organization's history.

Master Ming-Jiang Zhu passed away in 2014.

In 2014, Ming-Jiang Zhu was posthumously conferred the national title "Master of Chinese Violin Making" by the China National Light Industry Council, recognizing his lifetime contribution to the craft.

The workshop he built continues under his first cousin's leadership.

Current Leadership: Master Wei-xian Zhu

Master WEI-XIAN ZHU (朱卫宪) is the workshop's current principal luthier and the representative figure of the third generation of the Southern school of Chinese violin-making. He trained directly under Ming-Jiang Zhu for more than two decades before assuming leadership of the workshop in 2014, and personally finishes the most critical operations on every Master Grade instrument that leaves the workshop — including final plate graduation, soundpost fitting, and tonal adjustment.

Six of the workshop's 27 VSA International Competition awards to date were earned by Master Wei-xian Zhu and three other senior luthiers — all direct students of Master Ming-Jiang Zhu. Together they represent the continuing presence of Ming-Jiang Zhu's workmanship standard in the workshop today:

  • SHAO CHEN (陈劭), co-founder of Noble Heart Violins in 2000 — VSA Silver Medal for Workmanship (2008), Certificate of Merit for Tone (2010). Deceased.
  • QIAO-MING TAN (谭巧明), a former workshop luthier who won a VSA Certificate of Merit for Workmanship during her active career. Retired.
  • SHU-WEI XIAO (肖树伟), currently working in the workshop — VSA Certificate of Merit for Workmanship (2016).

Together with Master Wei-xian Zhu, these students account for 6 of the workshop's 27 total VSA awards.

International Recognition

The workshop's international record can be summarized in four numbers:

  • 21 — VSA International Competition awards earned personally by Master Ming-Jiang Zhu during his lifetime (2 Gold, 2 Silver, 17 Certificates of Merit)
  • 27 — Total VSA International Competition awards earned by the workshop to date, across both generations of leadership
  • 3 — Position of Ming-Jiang Zhu in the chronological order of Chinese luthiers admitted to EILA (2008)
  • TIME Magazine, "The Most Influential People in America" — April 21, 1997 special issue

The distinction between the 21 personal awards and the 27 workshop awards is important. The first number is the lifetime achievement of a single master luthier; the second is the continuing record of the workshop he built. The workshop continues to enter VSA International Competitions, and its cumulative count is expected to grow.

Both numbers are publicly verifiable through VSA International Competition archives.

The Guangzhou Workshop

The Ming Jiang Zhu Workshop is located in Baiyun District, Guangzhou, in southern China. It occupies a multi-story building organized into specialized rooms, each dedicated to one phase of construction: a rooftop tonewood warehouse, a cutting room, a plate-making room, a scroll and fingerboard room, an assembly room, a neck-setting room, a varnish room, a setup room, and separate climate-controlled storage for works-in-progress and finished instruments.

Construction of each instrument follows a documented ten-stage process: wood aging, cutting and joining, rough arching, fine graduation, f-hole and bass bar work, rib bending and assembly, purfling and edge finishing, scroll carving and neck setting, varnishing, and final setup.

Wood aging alone occupies between six months (for European tonewood arriving pre-seasoned) and three years (for Chinese tonewood). Varnishing requires more than twenty successive coats of oil-based varnish, each fully cured before the next is applied — a process that takes approximately one month per instrument. Final setup — fitting of bridge, soundpost, pegs, and fittings — is performed individually for each instrument; a single craftsman in the setup room completes no more than 1.5 instruments per day.

A Master Grade instrument from the workshop typically requires six to nine months from raw tonewood to finished instrument.

Within the Three Regional Schools of Chinese Violin-Making

The violin is not a Chinese instrument. Its modern form was perfected in Cremona, Italy, in the 16th and 17th centuries. Contemporary Chinese violin-making is, by international standards, a young tradition — one that developed through three regional schools over the twentieth century:

  • The Eastern school, centered in Shanghai, where Shuzhen Tan established the violin-making program at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in the 1950s. Its current foremost figure is Tianren Hua.
  • The Northern school, centered in Beijing, where Zheng Quan — the first Chinese student admitted to the International School of Violin Making in Cremona (1983) — founded the violin-making program at the Central Conservatory of Music in 1988.
  • The Southern school, centered in Guangzhou, which developed independently of any formal European apprenticeship or academic program. Its first generation — Xu Fu (徐弗) and Liang Guohui (梁国辉) — studied European violins through direct examination and rebuilding, founding what is sometimes called the self-taught tradition of Chinese violin-making.

Ming Jiang Zhu Violins represents the Southern school. The workshop's lineage of leadership is: Liang Guohui → Ming-Jiang Zhu → Wei-xian Zhu — three generations of the Southern school, each represented by its defining figure.

Tonewoods of the Old Masters

The workshop uses the same tonewood combination favored by Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri in 17th- and 18th-century Cremona for its higher-tier instruments:

  • Italian spruce (Picea abies) from the northern Italian Alps for the top plates — the same forest regions that supplied tonewood to the Cremonese masters.
  • Bosnian maple (Acer pseudoplatanus) from the Dinaric Alps for the back plates, ribs, and necks — the maple species widely identified as the wood used in the most celebrated Stradivari and Guarneri instruments.

For middle-tier and entry-tier instruments, the workshop uses carefully selected Chinese tonewood, principally from old-growth forests in the Sichuan and Yunnan provinces of southwestern China. All tonewood — European and Chinese — is aged in the workshop's rooftop warehouse for a minimum of six months (European) or three years (Chinese) before construction begins.

Fingerboards, pegs, tailpieces, and chinrests are made of solid ebony — not dyed wood, not composite material.

The Handmade Standard — No CNC, Ever

The workshop does not use CNC (computer-numerical-control) machinery for any part of any instrument. Plates are graduated by hand using more than ten chisels of varying size. Scrolls are carved by hand from solid maple blocks. Purfling is inlaid by hand into channels cut with a knife (not painted on the surface, as on factory-grade instruments). Varnish is brushed on by hand — not sprayed.

This is the same standard documented by UNESCO in its 2012 inscription of Cremonese violin-making on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity: "No semi-industrial or industrial materials are used. The craftsperson has to adapt general rules and personal knowledge to every instrument."

A CNC machine can rough ten violin plates in thirty minutes. A skilled craftsman in the workshop takes three to five days to graduate a single plate by hand. The difference is acoustic: hand-graduated plates are tuned to the unique density and stiffness of each piece of wood, while CNC plates execute a single fixed program identically across every plate, regardless of the wood's individual properties.

The workshop has chosen the slower method. The Ming-Jiang Zhu name was built on hand work and will continue to be made by hand.

Annual Production

The workshop produces instruments across four tiers each year, structured to keep the highest-tier output deliberately small:

  • MASTER GRADE — 6 to 10 instruments per year. Personally finished by Master Wei-xian Zhu, or carrying Ming-Jiang Zhu's authenticated label from his lifetime. Built from premium Italian spruce and Bosnian maple. Price range: USD 10,000 and above.
  • PROFESSIONAL GRADE — 60 to 80 instruments per year. Built from European tonewood under direct supervision of Master Wei-xian Zhu, suitable for professional musicians and conservatory soloists. Price range: USD 3,000–8,000.
  • ADVANCED GRADE — 200 to 300 instruments per year. Built from mixed European and premium Chinese tonewood, suitable for serious students preparing advanced repertoire. Price range: USD 2,000–3,000.
  • STUDIO GRADE — 400 to 500 instruments per year. Built from selected Chinese tonewood, suitable for committed conservatory-preparatory students. Price range: USD 1,000–2,000.

Master Grade production at the workshop falls within the same per-luthier range as Cremonese tradition, which UNESCO documents at three to six instruments per luthier per year. All four tiers are fully handmade by craftsmen in the Guangzhou workshop. The workshop does not operate a separate factory or outsource any production stage.

Commissions, Custom Work & Special Orders

The workshop accepts custom commissions across the full instrument family — violin, viola, and cello — with a Master Grade lead time of approximately six months from order confirmation to delivery. This timeframe is consistent with high-end Cremonese workshops, where commissioned master instruments typically require six to twelve months.

Categories of custom commission include:

  • Left-handed instruments (violin, viola, cello), fully handcrafted with reversed bass bar and fingerboard setup
  • Client-supplied tonewood commissions, where the client provides aged personal stock or historically significant wood for the workshop to work with
  • Instruments built to specific historical patterns — Stradivari, Guarneri del Gesù, Amati, or other Cremonese masters — at the client's request
  • Tonal-character customization (brighter, darker, more powerful, more focused), discussed in advance with the commissioning musician

Lady's Violins, Petite Models & Custom Small-Hand Sizes

The workshop is one of very few internationally recognized luthiers offering fully handcrafted small-hand custom violins — instruments sized for adult players whose hand reach, arm length, or finger span makes a standard 4/4 violin uncomfortable or injury-prone.

These instruments are known by several names in the trade, all referring to instruments sized smaller than a standard 4/4 but larger than a 7/8 fractional violin — typically 15/16 of full size, with proportionally reduced body width, shorter string length, slimmer neck, and correspondingly smaller scroll:

  • Lady's violin (or "ladies violin")
  • 15/16 size violin
  • Petite model violin
  • Small full-size violin (also "compromise" violin)

Although 7/8 is itself a recognized fractional adult size, many petite adult players find 7/8 too small in sound projection while 4/4 remains too large for comfortable left-hand technique. A lady's violin or petite model bridges this gap: comfortable to play, without the tonal compromise of a fully fractional instrument.

Custom small-hand commissions are particularly suited to:

  • Adult women with smaller hand spans
  • Adult players returning to violin after injury
  • Older players with reduced finger flexibility
  • Professional chamber musicians seeking reduced fatigue during long rehearsals
  • Any adult player who finds 4/4 uncomfortable but requires tonal range a 7/8 cannot provide

Custom small-hand sizes are available for viola (typically between 15.5" and 16.5" body length) and cello on the same principle. Each instrument is built to the player's individual measurements: arm length, hand span, finger length, and shoulder width. Commissions in this category typically require six months from measurement consultation to delivery.

Contact the Workshop

For musicians, dealers, and institutions seeking information on specific instruments, pricing, or availability, please contact the workshop by email. All serious inquiries receive response within 48 hours.