Here is a little about this famous Spanish book from this page. Below is a powerful video of one of the poems.

This is a literary text written in poetical prose. It is also part fiction and part autobiographical. It relates the life of the author in his beloved hometown, Moguer, Spain. In addition to the relationship that he has with his faithful little donkey, Platero, the story depicts the life in a small Spanish town, of the author’s life after he returned to his hometown after being gone for a while. The towns’ people see him as being a odd….dressed in black, and always accompanied by his donkey…the town’s children call him “El loco”.  The book is divided into 138 short sections, narratives, which are numbered chapters; no one contains more than eight paragraphs. It is poetical in the author’s choice of words and style of writing: metaphors, similes, symbolization, and lyrical impressions abound. Keeping with the poetical prose of Romanticism, the author utilizes musical aspects of language as well as poetical images. Many think JRJ wrote this book with children as his intended audience; however, the author himself addressed this in the prologue to a later edition saying that this was for no one.
“Some people believe that I wrote Platero and I for children, that this is a book for children.

No. In 1913, the editor of La Lectura, who knew I was writing this book, asked me to advance 

a few of its most idyllic pages for its “youth series.” Then, changing my idea momentarily, 

I wrote this prologue:

A NOTE TO THOSE GROWNUPS WHO MIGHT READ THIS BOOK TO CHILDREN:

This short book, where joy and sadness are twins, like the ears of Platero, was written for… I have no idea for whom! 

… For whomever lyric poets write… Now that it goes to the children, I do not add nor remove a single comma. That’s it!

“Wherever there are children”- Novalis used to say- “there is a Golden Age.” Well. it is within this Golden Age, which is like 

a spiritual island fallen from the skies, that the heart of the poet walks, and it finds itself there so at home that its 

most cherished wish would be not to have to ever abandon it.

Island of grace, of freshness and of joy, Golden Age of children; I always could find you in my life, a sea of mourning; 

let your breeze lend me its lyre high and sometimes senseless like the trill of the lark in the white sun of the morning!

I have never written nor will ever write anything for children, because I believe that the child can read the books that 

grownups read, with some few exceptions, that come to everyone’s mind. There are of course exceptions too for men and for women.”  

Juan Ramón Jiménez

The prologue of the book “The Granada School of Guitar-makers” was written by Angelo Gilardino. As a matter of fact, having this excellent piece was very helpful in my search to find a publisher very early in the project. In the book you will find English and Spanish versions but of course he wrote it in his native Italian and the true beauty of his writing comes through better in the Italian. I suspect that is why he recently published it on his own page. If your Italian is good enough please read it here.

This is not a tutorial but rather a few photos for those of you who like to see how things are made.  Above you can see a number of .5 mm veneers of 3 different species of wood glued up.  For the rosette I am using now I have to make three different sandwiches.  Strips, which will be thinned to about 0.5 mm, are cut off of each one.  I then give each strip the very slight wedge shape that you can see by looking ot the thicknesser in the photo below.  Usually this tool is used to thin purfling strips by pulling them through using a different blade.  The next step is to glue the strips together in a round mold which ensures that each section (tile) will butt up against the next and conform to the inner and outer circumference.  I took another photo after I took the clamps off and cleaned up the end grain so that you can see everything more clearly.  Making rosettes is a lot of work but it is quite a simple way of doing it.  Now each slice is cut off and you can place them end to end to make a full circle with the diameter of the centre of your rosette.  The first time you do this there is some trial and error or geometric calculations to do.  Working this way you can inlay the strips and the tiles all at once.  You want a reasonably tight fit so you have to put the veneer strips in first and then force the tile in between so that the strips are pressed against the walls of the channel.  The last photo is the finished project taken from a flamenco guitar which is now at Casa Luthier in Barcelona.  I have made a few other rosettes but have been using this one for many years.  I don’t play around with new rosettes the way some makers do because I get enough variety with my historic reproductions.

Antonio de Lorca

Antonio de Torres

Vicente Arias