About Francis Kuttner

Mischievous Curiosity – The Mentor Remains Ever The Student

An Interview by Marilyn Wallin

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to meet with Francis’s family, the generous creators of the new Francis Max Kuttner Fund, Suzanne Kuttner Potts, Francis’s sister, her husband, Dr. John Potts, and their daughter Martha Fishman. We explained in detail, and answered questions about, the new Fellowship and initiatives intended to attract more donors at all levels.

The interview began to flow, and it picks up below just after I had described that Francis would openly share his knowledge, even his own notebooks. He was a wonderful judge, my personal first choice for our Competitions—not only due to his skill at discernment, but that singularly, he was kind and encouraging to the Competitors when they sought advice following sometimes disappointing or confusing results. Itzel Ávila, Francis’s apprentice, and I had spoken of him as someone we could each rely upon for straight advice. And with 95% of the trade for most of my working life being men, his kindness and equal treatment were deeply appreciated.

MARILYN WALLIN: Well, Francis was seemingly neutral and always a gentleman. And that was wonderful.

MARTHA FISHMAN (Francis’s niece): Absolutely, it was his own personality, one of the things that I thought about. I spent a lot of time with him when he was in Boston because I went to a lot of his appointments.

One thing that really stood out about him to me, which really fits into what you’re saying, he was really not judgmental. He looked at each human as a human being, not, Oh, jeez, do you have chipped teeth? Are you wearing a nice outfit? Or are you the doctor, versus technician drawing the blood? He treated everybody the same. He treated everybody with equal respect. I mean, you know, if you were a jerk, he didn’t like you, but it wasn’t because you weren’t wealthy or hadn’t been educated. He would judge people on their own basis.

And so what you’re saying about the women, is you’re just saying to me—because I didn’t even know that [women being a small minority] was an issue in the field—but it completely fits with that about Francis: he wouldn’t pre-conceive.

MW: I get the feeling that he lived in a life surrounded by friends and family. He lived surrounded by love. And it makes me thrilled to know that he was always so well appreciated everywhere he went.

MARTHA: Well, I’ll say I would give him some of the credit for that, because I don’t think if you talk to all of his siblings that everybody always felt that. (Chuckles) Right? Like, people have their complaints. But I think he brought out the best in people, often.

MW: I believe he did.

SUZANNE KUTTNER POTTS, (Francis’s sister): Right. So he had more love, so to speak, than your average person because of the way he treated other people. For me, I just loved being in his atmosphere, in his presence. It was sometimes serious and sober, and sometimes hilarious. There was just a glowing energy that he had that was so apparent.

MARTHA: How about you, Dad?

DR. JOHN POTTS (Francis’s brother-in-law): Well, I thought he was remarkable. He was the closest thing to a brother I ever had. I felt an affinity for him, and a warmth that has been brought into the discussion so far. I didn’t know anything, I don’t know anything about violin making, or even now to play an instrument. I just enjoy music. But I appreciated that he was excelling in those areas without making a fuss about it.

In other words, he was just gently and modestly very effective, held himself to the highest standards, and appreciated other people who held those values. I think he was just a very special person in that way.

MARTHA: That was well said.

So, one was the thing I already said about how he looked beyond the appearances or status of each person, and would just connect. His ability to connect with people, I guess the time I saw it the most was at all these visits to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, unfortunately.

When I went with him, at the check-in desk he knew everybody’s name. He would chat with, “Oh, Bob, how are you doing?” He knew all of the infusion nurses by name and would converse with them. And of course, his physicians, you know he loved. One was before his transplant, and one was the bone marrow transplant doctor. She told me, and said in her toast at his memorial service in Cambridge, “You shouldn’t have favorite patients, but he was my favorite patient, and I used to always get way behind schedule just because I loved talking to him so much at every visit.”

She also said that he never gave up, he never openly felt sorry for himself. He just soldiered on and did the best he could. Never blamed anyone else for the outcome of anything.

So that was one thing.

And then the other: he got pleasure in just the eccentricities of life, and he never lost his sense of the magic of the world. You know, the way little kids will look at something and be amazed by it, and then as we are adults, I feel like we just sort of take stuff for granted.

For example—you know, he was Italian—he decided that Dunkin’ Donuts made the best espresso, so we would always have to go there. And then we would just sit in a little park.

I had his phone after he died, and I looked through his photos, it was heartening because you could see how he got pleasure in the quirkiness of things. In fact, he used to talk about one of them. Here in Wareham (Massachusetts) where we are now in the summer, the main town itself is a working class town, not a lot of poverty and certainly not an excess of money. And so there’s a gas station here called Joe’s Gas, and he loved that place. He would always go to get his car filled there. He’d say, “I love this Joe’s Gas. It’s just so—you know, he’s got his chipped tooth and”—you know, “I love that place.” 

He always said when his friend from Cremona came—well, that didn’t happen unfortunately—he was like, “I’ve got to take him to Joe’s Gas.”

Then, I saw a picture he had taken. He was sitting at this pizza store on Main Street. He had taken a photo of his slice of not great pizza, and his beverage, and then in the background across the street you could see “US Post Office.” And he had taken a picture of that. Just that scene. And then there were also lots of photos of just interesting mushrooms that he saw in the woods, or trees, or the light on the water—but not necessarily a spectacular sunset.

Then I remember that after he died I had a conversation with Joe at Joe’s Gas. And just down the road from Joe’s Gas is Sam’s Gas. And I learned that Joe actually first started working with Sam. So Sam kind of trained him, and then he opened his own place. I remember thinking, Ah! I wish Francis were alive, because I don’t know if he knew that, and he would love that fact.

MW: Absolutely, the passing on of knowledge is an important thing.

MARTHA: Yeah. But you know, just the quirkiness of things.

Then he also had a way of connecting with people. So for example, my mom—he could make you laugh, he could help you get through hard things by making you laugh. One thing I remember is that my mother always at meals says to my father, “Your glass is too close to the edge. It’s going to fall off.” She always moves his glass back. And so Francis, one night set the table and put the glasses halfway off the edge, all the glasses, just to like tease my mom about it.

Or I heard that once he sat next to you, Dad. And so my dad, when he’s calling my mom, has a pretty loud voice, and he’ll yell for my mom shouting “Sue?” Apparently once, he sat next to my dad, right, he sat next to him and yelled, “Sue?” really loudly.

And, dad, you said, “No, that hurt my ear.” And Francis said, “Well, now you know what it’s like.”

SKP: Those are really nice anecdotes.

JP: They bring out the special quality of the person. He had all this talent and commitment. He was always low-key about himself and very aware of other people’s needs. He was a remarkable person, a sort of equanimous presence. That was not in any way not doing things, it’s just that he would get along with what he was doing, but with a steady balance of feeling about it. It was very interesting.

SKP: That’s right.

MARTHA: Yeah. And the other thing that I learned after he died was that Francis didn’t like people to feel sorry for him. So through this illness most people had no idea that it was so serious.

MW: That’s sadly true.

MARTHA: And even when he relapsed and things were not looking good, Francis had said to friends, “I can’t really do it this month, but I’ll get down there next month.” And I think some had even offered to come up here to see him, and he was like, “Oh, no. I’ll get down there.” I think Itzel would tell you the same thing. I think it was until a couple of days before he died when she said she was going to come again in August. And he said, “I think that might be too late.”

SKP: Wow.

MARTHA: And she said that was the only time he ever, ever... And you know, he was super close to her, so it made sense.

SKP: Yes.

MARTHA: You know, most people didn’t know.

MW: Itzel shared with me things that I had no idea had happened in those last days and weeks. Francis working in Kevin Kelly’s shop had to have been an absolute blast for both of them, because of those two senses of humor that are relatively similar. I think that I would like to have been a fly on the wall in that shop on more than one day.

SKP: Ha, I didn’t know that.

MARTHA: Well, you know, there were very few days, or very few really weeks or months when he felt up to going there and working, he was on a medication that gave him a tremor. But he didn’t complain about that. And I think he would say, when he felt less well, [nonchalantly] “Oh, I’m not to go to work over at the studio today. I’ll do it next week.”

Unfortunately, I think to his friend Guy Rabut, who lives in Upstate New York, he kept saying he was going to go drive there and visit him. And I think he didn’t feel well enough.

MW: I know Guy would have held a bench space for Francis for forever.

MARTHA: Francis kept saying, “Oh, yeah, I’ll come up next month. Oh, yeah, I’ll drive up next month,” and he never did. One unfortunate thing about him not telling people is that I don’t think they came down here to visit him, because he didn’t tell people how sick he was. In a way it was sad, because I think people would have come, you know, his friends.

But I think my sense is that it was a combination of him not wanting other people to feel sad and worried and sorry for him, but also that he always maintained his hope, and he didn’t want to go into this…

JP: That’s right.

MARTHA: You know, he always looked forward, assuming, you know...

JP: The fullness of the present.

MARTHA: Yes. And he kept talking about going to that festival in Ireland, kept talking to his doctor about going there, and how he was going to go to Cremona, and things like that. So I think that’s part of how he kept… you know, he never lost hope.

Francis said sometimes in the morning he would lie in bed, and he would feel sort of depressed. And then, he would say to himself, “Well, just get up!” And then he would. So now I say that to myself sometimes too.

He had amazing strength.

JP: He just had a sort of vibrant sense of presence, and always felt for other people and never sorry for himself. He was wonderful.

MARTHA: I also remember he really wasn’t feeling well a lot of the time, part of it just because of the treatment itself, a lot of it.

Francis liked to cook. He would cook for them, you know, his favorite pasta. Or I remember you told me once you were on a long Zoom meeting in the evening. And my dad likes to have a glass of scotch in the evening. And he said, “I brought a glass of scotch up to your dad. I figured it was getting kind of long and late. And your dad gave me the thumbs-up.”

He got very good at making fires in the fireplace which they enjoyed just gazing into.

JP: That’s right.

SKP: That’s good. Those are good memories.

MW: Itzel tells me of a very beautiful portrait of your and Francis’s mother, Suzanne, that hangs on the wall? She couldn’t get out of her mind your mother’s particularly beautiful blue eyes.

MARTHA: Well, and he loved her, and his mother loved him, and he was so close to her. I remember that after she died, he said to me—and this was typical of him—”Now, I’m getting kind of dehydrated from all this crying,”. So he would sort of make light of it, but you know, that’s his way.

But this is how he would use humor to make people feel better: when his father was in the hospital, quite late in life, and had a feeding tube that goes into your nose down into your stomach because he couldn’t eat.

So apparently, Francis went to visit him and had a tube hanging out of his nose when he walked in the room. He goes, “Hi, Dad.” He had sucked a tube up his nose.

Oh, I remember what else his mother used to say. She had dentures she always left in... And apparently he would say, “So Mom, have you brushed your tooth?”

SKP: Yeah, right. That’s right.

JP: Yeah.

MW: Francis could tease people without offending them. I loved it.

JP: Yes, exactly. Exactly right.

SKP: Right. That’s right.

JP: So it was the warmth of life he felt.

MARTHA: Yes.

SKP: So in our whole family, we shared in that.

MW: He is treasured. His memories are treasured.

SKP: Treasured is the right word, yeah.

JP: Yeah.

SKP: But you don’t—you don’t always get that.

MW: And you as the family wouldn’t know how many lives he touched in our world.

JP: That’s a fact.

MW: But I saw it over the course of 40 years --

SKP: Oh, my.

MW: I saw him touch lives. And, Itzel, most of all, and she and I are now friends. And she helps me, because it aligns me with the younger generation and helps me understand more about my newer colleagues. Francis taught her, and she teaches on.

But everybody was shocked at the loss, and much surprised. The gathering in Oberlin last summer was just after his passing. And so most people arrived not knowing. At our first dinner together, we held a moment of silence, and then toasted his life and memory. And that was 70 award-winning violin makers from all over the world holding Francis for a moment in our hearts.

MARTHA: Oh, gosh.

SKP: Oh, gosh.

MARTHA: No, it’s beautiful. I mean, being as an example of his modesty I don’t think any of us realized how famous he was until after he died.

So it was remarkable to me. Shortly after he died we had our gathering. Then there was a concert in the main cathedral in Cremona in his honor. And then there was a concert in San Francisco with the Alexander String Quartet performing in his honor for that event. And then there was the concert in Paris, I saw the pictures, where I think they had eight of his cellos together.

All of those places held major things that needed a lot of organization. Phil, his younger brother, sent this CD of the Alexander String Quartet that they recently released. And they played, sometimes, the Quartet that he had made.

SKP: Oh, yeah.

MARTHA: So there’s some Mozart quartets that they recorded. And they have a thing in the back of the case, like a whole little insert dedicating it to Francis, this whole recording, talking about Francis.

So I don’t think any of us knew that he was that famous. I mean, he was so modest.

MW: We knew.

JP: Yes.

MARTHA: Well, we weren’t in that world, so it was interesting.

MW: Yeah, violinmaking seems a small world. But he, like many, saw that the path to the highest ground within the field is to make instruments and to sell only instruments that you make yourself, simply because one can guarantee the identity and provenance of the piece. It was a way to remain apart from high-dollar world of the violin world.

And the artist element of the violin world is a different bunch of us, and he was well and truly one of the ‘leaders of the pack’.

MARTHA: And I think it was—it’s not a secure career, right? You can’t count on your income, and you’re spending a lot of hours making something.

MW: And so imagine what the Fellowship is going to mean for someone like him, but 30 years ago? Someone who knows that they have the equivalent of one sale locked for the year, money in hand, and that the job attached is simply to get better at what they themselves do? And we intend to find someone who will rise to that challenge, and meet it with the kind of openness and gratitude that I certainly feel.

Our meetings over forming the Fellowship all involved Itzel, the core of the officers of The VSA, and the Scholarship and Grants Committee where Jay (VandeKopple) and I have worked together for many years. We were honored to be able to bring something new that’s never been done before in the violin making world. It’s brand new. No one has ever done anything like this.

MARTHA: That’s my dad’s idea, this whole thing.

MW: Oh, Dr. Potts, it’s absolutely wonderful! And we are doing our very best to bring it to life.

JP: It’s been wonderful talking about him and the unusual qualities—not only his skill as a violin maker, but his remarkable qualities as a person. If they’re symbolized in this Fellowship, we’re very happy.

SKP: Yes.