The Hill Workshop

The W. E. Hill & Sons workshop in Hampstead continues the company’s long tradition of instrument and bow making in London.

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The workshop brings together individual craftsmanship with the continuity of the Hill name.

Today, the workshop is led by Stefan-Peter Greiner and Robert Brewer Young, who direct Hill’s contemporary making and production. Working alongside a small team of specialist makers and craftspeople, they oversee the creation of new instruments and bows while developing the workshop for a new generation of musicians.

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Historical models, tools and working traditions provide an important foundation, but each new instrument is made as a contemporary object, intended for the musicians who will play it now.

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Hill’s approach has never been simply to reproduce the past. Its history is one of close observation, accumulated knowledge and practical innovation qualities that remain central to the workshop today.

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Decisions about model, materials, construction and sound are shaped through the experience of the makers, dialogue with musicians, and the knowledge developed within the firm over generations.

“The Hill archive gives us access to an extraordinary body of knowledge: notes, drawings and measurements of so many great historic instruments. We can learn from this material and, at the same time, use it to create work with a character of its own.” - Stefan-Peter Greiner