My name is Silvia, and I am a Luthier.

From a young age I have shown an attraction to music and manual activities.

At the age of eleven, I chose to approach the study of the violin simply because I had never seen it. It was love at first sight, right from the first lessons, a love that I cultivated with passion and perseverance for many years.

 

At the Conservatorio Tito Schipa in Lecce under Maestro Catanese I studied violin up to the 5th course and, a few years later, I deepened my knowledge of the instrument with Maestro Franco Mezzena.

From 2002 until today I have collected numerous experiences in concerts on and off stage, ranging in various genres from classical music to the popular music of my region.

 

At the age of 19, the call of the sea took me for several years to sail the Mediterranean on a sailing boat. A significant, profound experience, rich in teachings and principles of life that I jealously guard and remember with constancy in my daily life, without which I probably would not have embarked on the path of violin making. In this profession many subjects converge, humanities, science and mathematics, but fundamentally in addition to manual dexterity and intuition, you need boundless "patience". The sea has

taught me a lot of it, to this day I can say that it is a great asset.

 

Music and manual dexterity have always been central to my activities in fact, when I was a child studying the violin, if something broke I would try in every way ways to repair it myself in order to continue studying, and so, while I was searching for my my way, sailing in the waters of the Mediterranean, a dazzling encounter was encounter with those who later became my violin making masters.

I began as a "workshop girl". I watched for months as the expert hands of carpenters and luthiers to learn about woodworking, I helped with carpentry work until the time came to get my hands on musical instruments, and it was beautiful.

The very first jobs I did in violin making were rosettes for resonance holes, decorations and details.

 

On a sunny spring day, while I was walking in the historical centre of Lecce, on an exposed blackboard in a bar I read this sentence:

"There is a nostalgia for things that never had a beginning. Affounding one's origin in the land of Otranto is to assign oneself a real imaginary' - Carmelo Bene."

These words marked the decision to realise a dream, in Salento, in the place where I was born and live, the Liuteria Coppola, which since 2015 has been a point of reference for all stringed instruments.