In 1894, Ferdinando Garimberti, a master violin maker who made a great contribution to the golden period of the Milanese School of the 20th century, was born in the suburb of Palma, Italy. When he was small, he and his family moved to Milan for his father’s work. By around 1910, he met the already-famous Antoniazzi Brothers. Studying the base of violin making especially with Romeo Antoniazzi, he established close relationship with the brothers.
In those days, he also met Leandro Bisiach, who had already acquired unprecedented fame and wealth in the world of musical instrument making after Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. Bisiach introduced Ferdinando to Guiseppe Ornati, who made a lifelong friend and good rival of his later.
Startup of his career as a craftsman went smoothly, but his homeland Italy thrusted into WWI in 1915 and he was conscripted to go for the war.
After the war ended, he once did another job than instrument making, but moved back to Milan in 1920 to study and work in ateliers of Guiseppe Pedrazzini and Leandro Bisiach, who were most celebrated craftsmen in Milan in those days.
Before long, he established his own atelier and strived for his own style while improving his skills. From 1927 to the latter half of 1930s, he received at least three important awards in domestic competitions. His remarkable achievement was the first prize in the cello section in the commemorative competition for the two hundredth anniversary of Stradivari’s birth held in Cremona in 1937, which brought his fame to its zenith.

In 1963, he took over a teaching position at Cremona Violin Making School from Guiseppe Ornati and worked there till 1966. One of his teaching colleagues was Simone Sacconi. There is no doubt that these three: Garimberti, Ornati and Sacconi, shared knowledge and techniques around mid 1960s.
The violin, introduced here, was made in 1922, just after he established his atelier. While influenced by the school of Antoniazzi and Pedrazzini, it feels like solid foundation of his own scrupulous and masculine style, in a highest level of perfection.
The rather right-angle-like corners and purfling, the symmetrical elegant scroll, the gentle arch, the body clad in beautiful orangish varnish. Sound produced from there is capable enough to fully meet players’ demands.