Forty-five years ago, as a freshman in college, Cal Meineke was poking around a music department storage room and came across a rare Tyrolean violin made in the 17th century by the German Matthias ...

Hunched over his workbench, Tan Chin Seng shaves the wooden top plate of a violin, removing thin layers with slow, deliberate strokes. The work is meditative, out of the public eye. For Tan, ...