Innovation Through Tradition: Four Modern Luthiers Discuss Their Craft
The world of guitar making is in an exciting moment, with exceptionally skillful luthiers handcrafting instruments to the highest standards. Many of these artisans are making instruments in ways that draw from traditional techniques and designs while bringing them into the contemporary world—through everything from porcelain resonator cones and tiny archtops to demurely dressed Gypsy jazz guitars and 12-fret Stella tributes. I talked to four luthiers who tread this compelling line between tradition and innovation: Maegan Wells, Rachel Rosenkrantz, Shelley Park, and Aviva Steigmeyer.
MAEGEN WELLS
Maegen Wells Guitars & Mandolins
Forestville, California
How did you start building guitars?
My deepest passions for playing guitar and woodworking collided shortly after high school. After spending some time at a local repair shop, I enrolled at the Galloup School of Guitar Building and Repair and went on to spend five years apprenticing with archtop builder Tom Ribbecke.
Would you consider yourself an innovator? A traditionalist?
I’m completely in love with traditional archtops and the process of building them, but I also love the direction their evolution is taking the world of music and design. I’m certainly not doing anything that hasn’t been done before, but I’m also getting better at not being afraid to try new things!
What’s the next thing you’re excited to try?
I have a very beautiful set of maple that I’m very excited to use, and it’s only big enough for a 12-inch archtop! I love building small-body archtops, so I want to see just how small I can go.
What kind of player loves your guitars?
The kind who’s looking for the best of both worlds out of the acoustic and electric guitar. Whether it’s rhythm or lead, fingerstyle or jazz, a variety of players really seem to find these guitars uniquely versatile.
Did you go into the right field for your talents?
Without a doubt. I think the keystone to all of this is not giving up, no matter how much you fail. I’ve failed a lot. But I never gave up, and I never will. That’s a talent, right?
ADVERTISEMENT
Do you have a personal hero?
Linda Manzer. Between the instruments she has built and the kindness she has shared, Linda has truly made this world a better place.
RACHEL ROSENKRANTZ
Atelier Rosenkrantz
Providence, Rhode Island
How did you start building guitars?
I daydreamed about guitar building for too long not to do it. I tried first back home in
Paris while I was an art student in 1999, but it wasn’t easy to find an apprenticeship then, and even less easy to find the time while studying. It was about 10 years later that I found a traditional apprenticeship in Rhode Island with Daniel Collins. I learned acoustic guitar building with a focus on classical and parlor guitars. Quickly after, I shared a woodshop with [archtop guitar maker] Otto D’Ambrosio, then [upright bass luthier] Zachary Martin, before I acquired enough equipment to have my own woodshop in Providence.
Would you consider yourself an innovator? A traditionalist?
I am more drawn to innovation and experimentation. It is part of my fabric, as it is in what and how I teach. Innovation and risk were also encouraged during my studies and what I focused on as an industrial designer before my career shift to lutherie. The more I build, the less I am interested in confirming what we already know. Past instruments that get my attention were innovative in their time, like Maurice Martenot’s Palme Diffuseur or Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume’s octobass. I don’t like to follow blueprints.
How do you get inspiration for your designs?
It could be anything—the clasps of a ski boot for an attachment detail on a banjo frame or just sketching for a while and seeing what shapes emerge naturally. The last couple of years I have gotten inspiration from the Nature Lab, an incredibly extensive library of natural specimens at the Rhode Island School of Design. Biomimicry is a big part of my teaching there, so much so that it influences my current work—from observing bone structure and applying that to ceramic guitar parts, to material inspiration such as growing mycelium mushroom to replace wood.
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve done to a guitar?
Three weeks ago, I placed a braced soundboard in a top-bar style beehive, hoping the bees will build comb from the bracing—it is nature’s 3-D printer, after all. If the guitar is removed before honey is stored and letting time for the water content of the wax to evaporate, we can have some resonance. It is purely for the poetic and sculptural joy of it.
What’s the next thing you’re excited to try?
I am very excited about trying 3-D printing in porcelain. I designed porcelain resonator cones that are too complex to mold, but which can be created with a 3-D printer. The plastic prototype is already promising. I can’t wait to hear the sound of earthenware.
What kind of player loves your guitars?
Players who are not afraid to have fish-skin pickguards or Tyvek fingerboards. I am very fortunate that my customers already know of my less-traditional approach. I do remain fairly simple and somewhat rustic in my aesthetics, but my clients welcome the big twist. My cinched violin and rectangular parlor, for example, were both carte blanche commissions. I had total freedom of creation. What I thought might scare away clients is actually what attracts them.
Do you have a personal hero?
I got the chance to grow up with one, so I’ll go with my grandfather Daniel. To paraphrase my cousin Natalie Eldan, who wrote about him recently, my grandfather entered the French Resistance, changed his name to Jacquet Georges, and helped Jews cross the border through the Alps until he got caught. He ended up in Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria and was liberated in 1945 by the Americans. While declared dead from dysentery in a pile of corpses, his friend succeeded in giving him a little fuel of opium, which saved his life. He came back to France to discover all his family was exterminated, except for his sister André. People who lived lives like this create a lofty benchmark for others. I feel very fortunate to have spent my childhood in his tailor shop.
ADVERTISEMENT
Did you go into the right field for your talents?
I believe so. It is a discipline that embodies everything I am passionate about: music, design, and craft. It feels right every day when I get up; I don’t feel torn between disciplines, as I did when I was younger.
SHELLEY PARK
Shelley D. Park Guitars
North Vancouver, British Columbia
How did you start building guitars?
A guitar teacher suggested that I should learn to build guitars when I complained to him about not being able to afford to buy a nice one. At a point when I didn’t really have a plan for my life, I remembered this advice and found a course in guitar making in Vancouver.
Do you consider yourself an innovator? A traditionalist?
I don’t consider myself an innovator but I’m not a slavish traditionalist either. I have built my career trying to make respectful reproductions of Selmer/Maccaferri guitars by staying true to the original designs. That being said, I think it is important to incorporate modern techniques and materials where they can enhance the performance of the instrument.
How do you get inspiration for your designs?
Because I am building a traditional instrument, I get most of the inspiration for my designs from the unique Gypsy jazz guitars that come across my bench. Some are original vintage instruments. Others are later interpretations of the first Selmer/Maccaferri instruments. They are all important guitars in the genre and add to my knowledge and influence the decisions I make.
What is the weirdest thing you’ve done to a guitar?
I’m afraid I never do anything weird. I regularly tell people I have no imagination and my skills are best exercised emulating the original designs. My instruments are conservatively built and, I think, demurely dressed.
What kind of player loves your guitars?
I think the people who love my guitars love sweet-sounding instruments that are capable of subtle nuance yet responsive to the aggressive right-hand attack that is typical of Gypsy jazz. They have a love and appreciation for the original designs but with modern fit, finish, and playability.
Did you get into the right field for your talents?
ADVERTISEMENT
I think I will always be happy as long as I’m making something. Whether it is building guitars, cooking an elaborate dinner, or tying flies, I am at peace. I am deeply grateful to make my living building guitars, and I still look forward to it every day.
AVIVA STEIGMEYER
Preservation Guitar Company
Fayetteville, Arkansas
How did you start building guitars?
After my guitar got stolen, someone gave me a broken guitar and I learned repair out of necessity. In 2012 I did a short apprenticeship with Todd Cambio of Fraulini Guitars in Madison, Wisconsin. I was originally thinking I would take the skills I learned and apply them to repairing vintage guitars, but after building two guitars in Todd’s shop I fell in love with building from scratch and immediately went home and started setting up my own small shop.
Would you consider yourself an innovator? A traditionalist?
I am definitely a traditionalist. I love vintage guitars from the late 1800s to early 1900s. I like using old hand tools and hot hide glue, cutting dovetail joints by hand, and building smaller, ladder-braced guitars. The creative part is combining the traditional elements to make something unique that looks old.
ADVERTISEMENT
What’s the next thing you’re excited to try?
I’d like to make an all-black guitar with sparkly pearloid binding or maybe black-and-white checkerboard binding.
What kind of player loves your guitars?
Usually an old-time or acoustic blues musician. Often women, or those who enjoy a smaller guitar with a loud, rich sound. Someone who is excited to make the guitar their own from the start but wants the look of a classic instrument.
Did you go into the right field for your talents?
Yes. I love making things with my hands and being creative. I am also a printmaker, and I enjoy making the linocut print labels that I put in my guitars. I play guitar with my band, the Ozark Highballers, and being a musician and guitar builder work well together.
Do you have a personal hero?
I have lots of them, but currently I’d have to say Elinore Pruitt Stewart, a Wyoming homesteader in the early 1900s. She was an adventurous, capable woman who worked hard, maintained her independence, and had a great attitude and enjoyment of life. Where most people would have been burdened with the workload and hardship of that time, she embraced it all. Her book Letters of a Woman Homesteader is fantastic.
