Vinauro es una tienda de vino y galeria de arte en Granada. También hacen catas, exposiciones y talleres. El día 4 de enero van a ampliar su oferta con un velada de guitarra a cargo de Marcus Toscano. Marcus además de guitarrista es estudioso de la historia de la guitarra española.

I am a guitar-maker and although we do shape wood in a variety of ways I am not a sculptor. I have a good aesthetic sense and I can make wood obey my commands but I have only ever called myself an artisan. I don’t have that artistic sense necessary for creating images; not to mention I lack the specific skills to carve one of the most difficult woods. This image was created by Juan Antonio Carmona who works in the nearby village of Santa Fe.

Simplicio used modernist images or in some cases things that looked like they were inspired in Latin american mythology. Here the client asked for a specific image and I think we managed to fill the bill.

It is not uncommon to find guitars that show a dot of glue placed over the tip of the fan braces. This is more, almost a strap which must be designed to hold the brace end down with hide glue applied after the brace is shaped. This is another feature which I would not be willing to adopt on my own guitars but am happy to experiment with on this copy.

This ebony strip was used by García and Simplicio followed suit. It is not something that I would like to adopt for my personal models but I like my copies to be as authentic as possible. I have a few more photos of the very specific characteristics of Simplicio guitars and will upload them to future posts. I can’t believe how much time the little things are taking on this model, so many things are different.

I like the simplicity of the book-matched back with nothing in the middle on my guitars but when I am making copies I tend to follow the original. There are two ways to do this, one is to glue the strips between the pieces of wood and the other is to inlay them half of the depth. In this case I chose the latter for no special reason. This purfling will be mitered and will continue around the edge of the guitar but only on the back. I listened to and examined another Simplicio this weekend and I feel like I am getting a sense of what they are like. Quite important when you are making a copy. The one I saw was earlier with a Torres-style head and simpler purfling.