Tag Archives: johnray

Old world craftsmanship

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Myself on the left with Antonio Manjón. photo by Marco A. Pérez

What is a craftsman, also known as an artisan? I like the word artisan because on the one hand it contains the word art and has a direct spanish translation and on the other hand it is gender neutral. Craft in my mind doesn’t quite have the weight of the spanish “artesano”. Handmade also has a series of problems associated with it so here I will be talking about artisanship, artisans and artisan guitars.

I am back on this subject because I just took some shoes to the cobbler to have them repaired. Lately I buy the same brand and style of shoe as a replacement when the old ones wear out but over the past few years the quality has not been the same (where have I heard that before?) I spoke to my artisan shoemaker and he told me how they used to make the thread for his work using hemp fibres and a mixture of wax and animal fat. The proportion of wax to animal fat varied according to the job at hand and it was mixed by the cobbler. Well of course you can’t get the things you need anymore from the suppliers and now they sell him a “better” product which is nylon with some sort of oil on it to give it the same feel. The problem is that it doesn’t stand up to the flex of a shoe and that is what is happening to my shoes when they wear out before their time. These are not cheap shoes by the way.

Something similar is happening with guitar-making as the glue manufacturers convince the makers that synthetic glues are “better” and the wood suppliers tell us that we don’t need to season our wood. Synthetic glues are not better and seasoned wood is essential. There are some very good makers using synthetic glues but through personal experience I have seen that they could make even better-sounding guitars if they would use hide glue. Not to mention the thousands of clearly sub-par makers that could also improve their work if they would take the time to learn the traditional ways of working and the reasons behind the traditions like using hide glue and naturally seasoning your wood.

Leonardo García

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I have just written a guest post for Leonardo García’s blog Six String Journal. Why not head over there and check out all he has to offer to guitarists and learn a lttle more about him.

Arias marquetry

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I love old guitars and I have really enjoyed discovering how they made some amazing rosettes. However, I hope no one ever asks me to make a copy of this one. I really don’t know if I would be able to figure this one out.

Publications and Presentations

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When I was fifteen years old my heroes were Carl Sagan and David Suzuki.  For those of you who are not canadian David Suzuki is the life sciences version of Carl Sagan, a geneticist who found that he had a talent for explaining science to the layman.  I suppose somewhere in my motivations for this blog is that fascination and respect for these two men. Perhaps I can bring the world of historic guitars and guitar-making to people who know little about it and to that end having access to different formats is useful. I enjoy the complete freedom that self-publishing affords but to have someone else value my work enough to publish it (especially in this age of paper phobia) is exciting and offers a challenge in that they demand a certain level of rigour and novelty. I also greatly appreciate those that invite me to speak about my investigations.

The original idea of this blog was to publish articles that would interest the guitarist and the collector of guitars and thereby get them interested in my instruments. I very quickly found that the only thing of interest I could write about was old guitars and my own workshop. I have a few guitarist followers but my main public is guitar-makers or people on their way to learning the craft. So my blog isn’t garnering the desired audience but I have got quite attached to it so I think I will carry on. I do get a lot of positive feedback as well so there is that. I usually mention here anything that I have published so none of this will be new to the faithful reader. However, I would like to list everything I have published and presented in one place.

Publications

The Art of Guitar – María Isabel López Gonzalvez. Photographs of my work. My only contribution was translation of the texts. 2006

Roseta – Spanish musicology journal of the Sociedad Española de la Guitarra

  • Guitarra Vicente Arias de 1900 (2010) co-authored with Javier Riba
  • Una guitarra para Segovia (2016) co-authored with Elena Gonzalez
  • Guitarra de Ignacio Fleta e hijos (2018) co-authored with Leopoldo Neri

A review of basic procedures for an organological examination of plucked-string instruments, Journal of Cultural Heritage Special Issue Wooden Musical Instruments (2017), Elsevier. co-authored with Aarón García, Antonio Manjón and Thomas Holt

Experimental assessment of the effect of an eventual non-invasive intervention on a Torres guitar through vibration testing, Journal of Cultural Heritage Special Issue Wooden Musical Instruments (2017), Elsevier. co-authored with Marco Antonio Pérez, Antonio Manjón and Roger Serra-López.

Adopting a policy of Faithful Copies of Historically Important Musical Instruments as an Alternative to Restoration in Wooden Musical Instruments: Different Forms of Knowledge (2018), Philharmonie de Paris. co-authored with Aarón García, and Antonio Manjón

Las Guitarras de Llobet in Miguel Llobet: Del Romanticismo a la Modernidad (2016) Gran Teatro de Córdoba. co-authored with Antonio Manjón

The Granada School of Guitar-makers (2014) Diputación Provincial de Granada I co-ordinated this collection of writings and I am credited as editor.

Talks

Tampere Guitar Festival 2006 Tampere, Finland Techniques of the Granada Guitar-makers (5-day course)

Guild of American Luthiers convention 2014. Book presentation – Granada School of Guitar-makers

Cordefactum Guitar Festival in Liers, Belgium 2017 Granada School of Guitar-makers

Jornadas de la Guitarra de Badalona 2017 Restoration and Investigation of Historic Guitars. with Marco Antonio Pérez

Granada, Ciudad de la Guitarra (Exposición de la Caja Rural 2017) Round Table: Ethics and Globalization in Guitar-making.

California State University’s Summer Arts – La guitarra española in Granada (2017) Granada School of Guitar-makers

II Jornadas Homenaje Antonio de Torres in Almeria 2019, Study processes and research for my copies of Torres guitars.

100 Centenario biblioteca musical Victor Espinós in Madrid 2019, Una guitarra para Segovia: Santos Hernández 1924

Last of the 2006 videos

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I guess I will have to start making more videos in order to keep up this rhythm of posting.

There is a thread on delcamp right now about selecting Indian rosewood with good advice. The only thing I would add is that this sharp contrast between two colours can also look very good and is sometimes present in Indian.