A chemist who played the double bass.

Hidersine began with a pharmacist who played the double bass. The company’s history, abridged in 2014 by Barnes & Mullins from a 1969 memoir by the founder’s widow, Winifred Hider, says Francis Hider (1863–1943) qualified as a dispensing chemist in 1886 — hence the letters M.P.S., for Member of the Pharmaceutical Society, after his name — and in 1890 opened his own chemist’s shop in Forest Gate, in east London. Late that year, it says, he developed a double-bass rosin meant to improve on the mostly German rosins then on sale, in three grades for cold, medium and warm temperatures, followed by “F. Hider’s Improved Violin Resin.”

Hider sold the shop to study the bass full time and, the company says, joined Henry Wood’s Queen’s Hall Orchestra in 1895, while his father helped him make rosin in the family kitchen. It gives 20 August 1897 as the date the Hidersine Company was formed, with Francis as sole director. Production later moved to a building at a tar distillery in Barking, where, the company says, it launched Hidrol, a string preservative, and Hidersol, a varnish cleaner, in 1912; in 1920 it moved again, to Barking’s Town Quay.

The founding date has a history of its own. For decades Hidersine used 1876; the company says that date was added to its letterheads in the 1940s and still appeared on some products in 2014. Having traced the memoir through one of Hider’s sons in 2013, it now says the first product was more likely made in 1890, and its website carries “Est. 1890.”

From Barking to Croydon to Oswestry.

The Depression nearly ended the business. Hidersine’s history says that, with orchestras struggling and cinema orchestras disappearing after the arrival of sound films, staff were let go, and in November 1932 Hider sold the company to Robert Hirt and Charles Robert Bethell, Croydon businessmen who sold banjo and drum vellums and instrument strings. It was renamed The Hidersine Company Ltd; Companies House, the UK register, records a company of that name incorporated on 4 November 1932, which matches the account. Rosin production moved from Barking to Croydon in 1942, the history says, and under the Hirt family the brand registered trademarks in countries including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.

In 1987 the Hirt family sold Hidersine to Barnes & Mullins, the instrument maker and distributor founded in 1895 by the music-hall banjo players Bowley Barnes and Albert Mullins — in Bournemouth, according to Barnes & Mullins’ own timeline, before it moved to London in 1900. Barnes & Mullins already owned AB rosin, a Victorian-era formula credited to the British musician and teacher Amy Birch. After the purchase, Hidersine says, production moved from Croydon to Oswestry in Shropshire, home of Barnes & Mullins’ manufacturing company; Barnes & Mullins says it moved its own headquarters from London to Oswestry in 1999.

A second heritage name followed. Hidersine says it was asked to keep making the light and dark rosins of W. E. Hill & Sons, the London violin makers and dealers, when the Hill workshop at Havenfields in Buckinghamshire closed; English Wikipedia says the workshop was there from the mid-1970s until 1992. Barnes & Mullins still sells Hill rosin under the Hill name, made, it says, to the original Hill recipe.

Strings, rosin and fittings.

The seven brands here make the small things string players handle daily, in four trades. Two make shoulder rests. Kun was started in Ottawa by Joseph Kun, who, the company says, left Czechoslovakia for Canada in 1968 and had the design patent for its first rest published in 1972; it says its products are made in Canada. Bon Musica is the trade name of Bonmusica OHG of Vettweiß, in western Germany, whose own product notes describe the bendable, plastic-coated aluminium rest it manufactures.

Two work on the bow. CodaBow began in Winona, Minnesota, in 1993 as a partnership between the materials scientist Stan Prosen and the engineer Jeff Van Fossen, its early website said, and describes its carbon-fibre bows as made in the USA. Hidersine, the British rosin maker, says on its website that it was founded in London in 1890, though the same site has also given 1876; it says the music company Barnes & Mullins bought it in 1987 and moved production to Oswestry, in Shropshire.

Two make strings. Jargar was founded in Denmark by Jarl Hansen, a cellist in the Royal Danish Orchestra, after experimenting from 1950; its website now calls it part of the Thomastik-Infeld family. Warchal, a Slovak company, was established in 2003 by the violinist Bohdan Warchal Jr., concertmaster of the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, which his father founded in 1960.

The seventh, Wittner, makes metronomes and fittings. It says Gustav Wittner founded it in 1895; it is based in Isny im Allgäu, labels almost all its products Made in Germany, and since 2024 has belonged to GEWA music of Adorf, in Saxony.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Hand-poured in England, the company says.

Hidersine today is a brand of Barnes & Mullins rather than a separate trading company. Companies House shows that The Hidersine Company Limited filed dormant accounts from 2017 and was dissolved by voluntary strike-off on 3 February 2026, while Barnes & Mullins Limited, based in Oswestry, remains active. Barnes & Mullins says its managing director, Brian Cleary, became its sole owner in 2021, after he and Bruce Perrin bought the company from a family trust in 2009.

The rosin is the core of the brand. Barnes & Mullins’ 2026 product pages describe Hidersine rosins such as the light 1V and 3V for violin and the darker 6V Deluxe as made to Francis Hider’s historic recipes and “made in England, United Kingdom” by hand-mixing and hand-pouring, give England as the country of origin, and rate each cake on a 1–10 “Grip Profile Rating.” In 2014 the company described heating a blend of wax and pine resin, pouring it from a small jug into moulds set on Hidersine-branded cloths and flaming the surface to remove imperfections. Reserve21, on sale by 2021 for violin and cello, adds British beeswax and comes in a velveteen bag. The brand also sells bows, shoulder rests named Oxbury and Maesbury, cases and student instruments such as the Vivente, Piacenza and Veracini; its higher Hidersine Reserve violins and cellos are, the company says, hand-selected from workshops across Asia — so “made in England” applies to the rosin, not to everything carrying the name.

For a design guide, Hidersine shows how a small consumable can carry a long story: a chemist’s name turned into a trademark, a founding date corrected by the company itself, and a cake of amber resin on a printed cloth that has changed little. Compare Pirastro, the German string maker that also sells rosin, and Thomastik-Infeld, whose strings Barnes & Mullins also sells. For this guide we use rosin amber, resin brown and a Shropshire green with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Hidersine’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.