Italian and French Violin Makers

Since 1998, when he established the publishing house "Jost Thöne Verlag", Thöne has published a dozen large books about the Italian and French violin makers of the last four centuries. These reference works feature more than 120 of these important violin makers along with their instruments and biographies.

The latest of these works was "Antonio Stradivari", published in 2010; it became "the state of the art" in violin documentation, showing in four volumes 300 violins, violas and cellos of the icon Antonio Stradivari in life size. This documentation gained international recognition.

Some of the books have been translated into four other languages besides English and are already being sold worldwide, for example by international auction houses such as Sotheby’s, Christies or Tarisio in London and New York.
Jost Thöne founded the Violin Expo Cologne in 2006, creating a globally unique stage to present international contemporary violin making in the historic centre of Cologne. He supervised the exhibition "Antonio Stradivari – Myth and Music" in Cologne in 2010 as a guest curator of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Foundation Corboud. This exhibition was unfortunately postponed due to culture budget cuts by the city of Cologne.