The Ferrer family in Granada was an extremely important force in making Granada what it is today but the more I learn about that time the more I see that even with Eduardo Ferrer’s influence Granada might have gone in a very different direction.  What really changed everything was the influence of two young friends, both cabinet makers, one who began working for Eduardo Ferrer and the other who was a family friend of the Ferrers.  Antonio Marin Montero and Manuel López Bellido set up shop together and started on the road to forming the two most important guitar making dynasties in Granada.  Depending on whom you speak to the story is slightly different but without a doubt there was teaching and learning on both sides.  Antonio was the more experienced cabinet maker while Manuel had more experience making guitars.   But what made this venture so much more important than Casa Ferrer?  It might have everything to do with the difference between being a guitar seller who makes guitars (Ferrer) and a dedicated maker (Marin or Bellido) but that reflects my own opinions on this subject which you might not share.  A large number of the guitar makers at the time were trained or later worked in this large workshop.  Some started here and then went to work for Ferrer and others started with Ferrer and then came to the Bellido Montero shop.

I was lucky enough to get two guitars in my shop last week which brought home the quality and passion of the work that these two men did, a Bellido from 1974 and a Marin from 1966.  Both guitars were braced with a light fan, one of them almost exactly Torres, including the unscalloped transverse bars and no bridge strap.  The other had Torres closing braces.  The top thicknesses were in the 1.9-2.0 mm range, the bodies were small and the total string length was 655 in both cases.  Here is a photo of Evaristo Valentí playing the Marin.  I won’t offer any more details about these guitars because the author of the upcoming book about the Granada makers wants to use them to illustrate the evolution of the Granada school.