Andrew Fairfax

Andrew Fairfax (1953 to 2025) was a British violin maker, restorer and expert, and one of the most respected figures of his generation in the London trade. He spent more than thirty years at J & A Beare restoring the greatest Cremonese instruments, and his own making grew directly out of that work.

Born in Sevenoaks, Kent, he trained at the Newark School of Violin Making, where his earliest instruments date from 1979. He went on to work for Joost van der Grinten in Amersfoort before Charles Beare brought him to J & A Beare in 1982. There he restored and studied instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu for over three decades and became a leading authority on British making: a founder member of the British Violin Making Association, co-author of The British Violin and The Voller Brothers, and curator of Tarisio's 2016 Panormo exhibition. In 2014 he left Beare's to make full time, setting up Fairfax Violins in Tunbridge Wells with his wife Anneleen. He worked from Guarneri del Gesu and from Stradivari, including the S form and the Archinto viola pattern, and made violins, violas and cellos.

Nicola Benedetti played his Stradivari S-form model, and Teiko Maehashi and Kaja Nowak his Guarneri del Gesu models. Pieter Schoeman, leader of the London Philharmonic, has spoken of the depth of sound in his violins. A violin was commissioned for the Royal Academy of Music's Calleva Collection. His restoration clients included Leonard Elschenbroich and Susanne Stanzeleit.