This research notebook presents a series of oral surveys carried out in the 1980s with violin makers in Mirecourt on their professional careers and, thirty years later, with the “new violin makers” trained in a context that has changed considerably. The interviews deal with the apprenticeship of the profession, the life of the workshops, the transmission of knowledge, the role of kinship and the ancestral nature of the workshops, the rhythms of work, the festive rituals, the competition between artisanal and industrial production, the geographical mobility of the violin-makers and finally the crises which severely affected the profession until its revival at the end of the 20th century.