Żarski Tolimir, *1834 Dąbrowa Górnicza, †December 1896 Prague, Polish luthier and engineer. He worked in various factories in Poland and in his own furniture factory in Warsaw. After several years of research, he created an acoustic theory that was supposed to enable perfect correction of the violin. After 1880, he devoted himself entirely to violin-making and established a workshop in Warsaw, soon gaining fame as an excellent builder and copywriter; there, at the Music Exhibition in 1888, he presented two violins built according to the Brescian school, two according to the Cremona school, and a cello based on C. Bergonzi’s model. S. Barcewicz, K. Różalski, M. Szymański and A. Stelmach praised Żarski’s proofreading skills and his varnish, perfectly imitating old Italian ones, in the Warsaw press in 1892. In 1893, Żarski presented his violin in Berlin (S. Barcewicz performed on it) and in Markneukirchen, and in 1894 at an exhibition in Lviv (string quartet), where he was awarded an honorary diploma. Embittered by the lack of wider recognition, he moved to London, and then – thanks to the recommendation of the virtuoso F. Ondřiček – to Prague, where he died in poverty, suffering from tuberculosis. Before his death, he probably passed his method on to a Czech luthier named Cząstek. Many of Żarski’s instruments are still considered original Old Italian instruments. The Museum of Musical Instruments in Poznań has a Żarski violin from 1892, and Antoni Laske had a violin with a handwritten signature: Korrec: T. Żarski / 1853.
Literature: W. Kamiński Skrzypce polskie, Kraków 1968; B. Vogel Instrumenty muzyczne w kulturze Królestwa Polskiego, Kraków 1980.
