The violin-maker and teacher Juliet Barker, who has died aged 88, was a pioneer in her field, carving out a successful career when it was a highly unusual choice for a woman. In addition to her own output of instruments, she welcomed many hundreds of would-be makers to her thriving workshop in Cambridge, where she ran courses along the strict tenets of her training at the Mittenwald school in Bavaria.
This included leaving the workshop in good order at the end of the day with not a wood shaving on the floor. One of her first pupils, Colin Garrett, remembered that she insisted on the use of knives rather than chisels: “As a teacher she knew what she wanted and the way to produce a good result, and she was a particular stickler in her attitudes to thicknessing and arching.”
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