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Jay Callender Freeman

Biographies

John Dilworth

FREEMAN, Jay Callender Born 1867 Chicago, Illinois, died 1953 Stockbridge, Massachusetts USA. Maker and eminent connoisseur. Apprenticed in Chicago to August Heck 1887. Worked for Lyon & Healy from 1889. From 1890 was actively involved in building the Lyon & Healy Collection of master instruments, travelling regularly to Europe. Bought the collection of Royal de Forrest Hawley, one of the finest accumulations of Cremonese instruments of the time, and catalogued it for Lyon & Healey in 1904. Continued in the same manner as head of the violin department at Wurlitzer’s in New York from 1920. Author (with A. Bachmann) of Encyclopedia of the Violin (New York, 1929). His own violins are rare; at least one was made at the beginning of his career in 1888. [Wenberg]