As many here will know, we suffered a disastrous and traumatic fire which tore through our workshop last June, and in the aftermath, we found ourselves looking at different ways of trying to make a fresh start and moving on after this psychologically-challenging event. It wasn't all bad, last year: Steve McCurry, who took the iconic photograph of green-eyed Sharbat Gula, usually known as the 'Afghan Girl' for National Geographic magazine, which has rightly been described by many as the twentieth century's Mona Lisa, photographed us in our workshop (before the fire) for inclusion in his recent book of photographs 'People & Places', which shows various artisans and artists, poets and writers, who live and work in the South Bank area of London.
A Facebook 'business page' had been suggested to us by Emily, daughter of guitar maker Gary Southwell, back in February 2014, and she helped us set up a basic page; the idea was to run something in parallel to our website, something which would complement it, but which we could update ourselves with news of what we were up to, showing what was being made, work in progress and general stuff that we hoped would be interesting to read – in other words, more of a newsletter, something which the business Facebook page format seemed to encourage. We didn't do much to develop it at that stage due to pressure of work, but in the aftermath of the fire we were looking at various ideas to help us renew and grow both the workshop and our own lives, both of which were almost stopped dead by the fire; it's certainly true to say that in that inferno, Steve came closer to death than he had ever experienced, so we were looking for positive ways forwards. One of the strategies was to renew our presence at the Utrecht Festival, housed in an exciting new building, the Tivoli Vredenburg; we hadn't attended the Utrecht festival in ten years, due to its relocation in various unsuitable buildings, while the original Vredenburg centre was being rebuilt. Old friends David van Ooijen and Michiel Niessen both encouraged us to go to Utrecht, and they presented a demonstration of our instruments on the Saturday afternoon; during discussions and planning of this demonstration, they both encouraged us to get to grips with our Facebook page, and get it out there. Having received the encouragment from David and Michiel, we've been trying out new images and posting various news items, and we've received a lot of positive feedback and comment, and of course it has occurred to us that many who read the Lute List might be interested in knowing that the page exists, so please excuse the blatant plug! The URL is: www.facebook.com/BarberAndHarris We hope you find somehing there of interest; there are for example short films, including one made by science communication students at Imperial College, London, entitled 'A pair of human hands', also a short film about the Yards where we work, which was shot during an Open Studios summer event, and 'Craftwork: Rhythm for Lute' by Louis-Jack Horton-Stephens, which has been entered in various European film festivals. And of course instruments being made and other updates and stuff we hope will interest the visitor. Sandi and Stephen. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
