I am a guitar maker currently researching the influence of the 19th-Century-Viennese school of guitar making on that of North America at the turn of the 20th Century. My PhD studies are funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain. The instruments I make by hand, range from copies of Stauffer guitars of the early 19th century, through the harp, or kontragitarres, of his pupil Scherzer in the mid 19th century, to Martin and Gibson guitars of the 1930's and 1940's 'golden era' of North American acoustic guitar making.  |