Meet the Maker: John Koster

by Nicholas Von Robison

Originally published in American Lutherie #34 1994 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Four, 2006



Dateline Vermillion, South Dakota. It happened at the GAL’s 13th national convention. Quick as an adder, the long, thin arm of American Lutherie editor Tim Olsen snaked into the crowd and tore me kicking and screaming from the group of luthiers. “Go interview” was the command, and “Who would you like to do?” the question. Without hesitation I named John Koster, the conservator of the Shrine to Music Museum (Editor’s note: now the National Music Museum). I had never met John but I knew that he was also a devoteé of taking tiny splinters of wood and putting them under a microscope in order to precisely determine the identity of a wood. I soon found that wood anatomy is only one of the myriad and assorted areas of knowledge that John calls upon in his work. He was enjoying a day off, but graciously consented to this interview and a tour of his workshop. The time I spent with John one of the high points of my convention experience.

John, please tell us a little bit about your early beginnings, your background and education, and the path that led you to the Shrine to Music Museum.

I’m a fairly recent arrival here at the Shrine to Music Museum. I came here in September of 1991 so I’ve only been here eight or nine months. Previous to this I was a harpsichord maker for about twenty years, back in Massachusetts. Before that, my background had been more musical than instrument making. I went to St. Thomas Choir school in New York City, the only church-affiliated, boarding choir school in the country, very much on the English model. I was into classical music and played the piano, but really wanted to play the harpsichord. In prep-school years, during the summer, my father and I put together one of the original Zuckerman clavichord kits — a plywood box with some strings on it and a piano keyboard. A couple of years later when I was fifteen we put together a harpsichord, another Zuckerman kit, one of the original nonbent-sided ones. It was a cigar-box-violin kind of thing, but it got me started and I had something to play on.