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Luthier

 
Luthier

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Luthier



 
 
A luthier is someone who makes or repairs stringed instruments. The word luthier comes from the French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 word luth which is French for "lute
Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
".

The craft
Craft

A craft is a skill, especially involving practical The Arts. It may refer to a trade or particular art.The terms is often used as part of a longer word ....
 of lutherie is commonly divided into two main categories: stringed instruments that are plucked
Plucked string instrument

Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the string s. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such as way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate....
 or strummed, and stringed instruments that are bowed
Bow (music)

In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
.






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Antonio Stradivari
A luthier is someone who makes or repairs stringed instruments. The word luthier comes from the French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
 word luth which is French for "lute
Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
".

The craft
Craft

A craft is a skill, especially involving practical The Arts. It may refer to a trade or particular art.The terms is often used as part of a longer word ....
 of lutherie is commonly divided into two main categories: stringed instruments that are plucked
Plucked string instrument

Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the string s. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such as way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate....
 or strummed, and stringed instruments that are bowed
Bow (music)

In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
. While there is a nearly limitless variety of stringed instruments both historic and modern, from many places and cultures — the following lists give some examples of instruments in each category still in use today.

In the first category are the: autoharp
Autoharp

The Autoharp is a registered trademark for a musical stringed instrument having a series of chord bars attached to dampers which, when depressed, mute all the strings other than those that form the desired chord ....
, banjo
Banjo

The banjo is a stringed instrument developed by Slavery in the United States Africans in the United States, adapted from several African instruments....
, bouzouki
Bouzouki

The bouzouki is the mainstay of modern Greek music. It is a stringed instrument with a pear-shaped body and a very long neck. The bouzouki is a member of the 'long neck lute' family and is similar to a mandolin....
, charango
Charango

The charango is a small South American stringed instrument of the lute family, about 66 Metre#SI multiples long, traditionally made with the shell of the back of an armadillo....
, cittern
Cittern

The cittern or cither is a stringed instrument of the guitar family dating from the Renaissance. With its flat back, it was much simpler, and therefore cheaper, to construct than the lute, in addition to which it was easier to play and, being smaller and less delicate, far more portable....
, appalachian dulcimer
Appalachian dulcimer

The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings. It is native to the Appalachian region of the United States....
, guitar
Guitar

The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six Strings , but Tenor guitar, Seven-string guitar, Eight-string guitar, Ten-string guitar, Eleven-string guitar, Twelve-string guitar, Thirteen-string guitar and doubleneck guitar string guitars also exist....
, harp
Harp

The 'harp' is a stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicular to the Sounding board. It is also considered to be a percussion instrument....
, kantele
Kantele

Kantele is a Finland traditional plucked string instrument. It is related to the Ethnic Russian music gusli, the Latvian kokle, the Lithuanian kankles and the Estonian kannel....
, kithara
Kithara

The kithara or cithara was an ancient Greek musical instrument in the lyre family. In modern Greek the word kithara has come to mean "guitar" ....
, kora
Kora (instrument)

The kora is a 21-string instrument harp-lute used extensively by peoples in West Africa....
, koto
Koto (musical instrument)

The koto is a traditional Japanese string instrument musical instrument derived from the Chinese zither . The koto is the national instrument of Japan....
, lute
Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
, theorbo
Theorbo

A theorbo is a plucked string instrument. As a name, theorbo signifies a number of long-necked lutes with second peg-boxes, such as the liuto attiorbato, the French th?orbe des pi?ces, the English theorbo, the archlute, the German baroque lute, the Ang?lique or angelica....
, archlute
Archlute

The archlute is a European plucked string instrument developed around 1600 as a compromise between the very large theorbo, the size and re-entrant tuning of which made for difficulties in the performance of solo music, and the Renaissance tenor lute, which lacked the bass range of the theorbo....
, angelique
Angélique (instrument)

The ang?lique is a plucked string instrument of the lute family of the baroque era. It combines features of the lute, the harp and the theorbo....
, torban
Torban

The torban or teorban is a Culture of Ukraine musical instrument that combines the features of the Baroque Lute with those of the psaltery. It was invented ca....
, kobza
Kobza

Kobza is the name of several musical instruments, mostly of the lute type , in eastern Europe. The term has a Turkic origin in the kobyz and komuz....
, bandura
Bandura

Bandura refers to a Ukrainians plucked string instrument. It combines elements of a box zither and lute, as well as to its lute-like Baroque predecessor, the kobza....
, lyre
Lyre

The lyre is a string instrument well known for its use in classical antiquity and later. The recitations of the Ancient Greece were accompanied by lyre playing....
, pipa
Pipa

The pipa is a plucked China string instrument. Sometimes called the Chinese lute, the instrument has a pear-shaped wooden body. It has been played for nearly two thousand years in China, and belongs to the plucked category of instruments ....
, mandolin
Mandolin

A mandolin is a musical instrument in the lute family . It is descended from the Mandora, a soprano member of the lute family. It has a body with a teardrop-shaped soundboard, or one which is essentially oval in shape, with a soundhole, or soundholes, of varying shapes which are open and are not decorated with an intricately carved grille lik...
, oud
Oud

The oud is a pear-shaped, stringed instrument, which is often seen as the predecessor of the western lute, distinguished primarily by being without frets, commonly used in Middle Eastern music....
, shamisen
Shamisen

The shamisen or samisen , also called sangen is a three-stringed musical instrument played with a plectrum called a bachi. The pronunciation in Japanese language is usually "shamisen" but sometimes "jamisen" rendaku ....
, sitar
Sitar

The sitar is a plucked stringed instrument. It uses sympathetic strings along with a long hollow neck and a gourd resonance chamber to produce a very rich sound with complex harmonic resonance....
, ukulele
Ukulele

The ukulele , , or abbreviated to uke, is a chordophone classified as a Pizzicatoed lute; it is a subset of the guitar family of musical instruments, generally with four nylon or gut strings or four Course of strings....
, and veena
Veena

Veena is a plucked stringed instrument used in Carnatic music. There are several variations of the veena, which in its South Indian form is a member of the lute family....
.

In the second category are the: cello
Cello

The violoncello is a bowed string instrument. A person who plays a cello is called a cellist. The cello is used as a solo instrument, in chamber music, and as a member of the string section of an orchestra....
, crwth
Crwth

The crwth is an archaic string instrument musical instrument, associated particularly with Music of Wales, although once played widely in Europe....
, double bass
Double bass

The double bass or contrabass is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow string instrument used in the modern orchestra. It is a standard member of the string section of the orchestra and smaller string musical ensembles in European classical music....
, erhu
Erhu

The erhu , also called nanhu , and sometimes known in the West as the "Chinese violin" or "China two-string fiddle," is a two-stringed Bow musical instrument, used as a solo instrument as well as in small ensembles and large orchestras....
, fiddle
Fiddle

The term fiddle refers to a violin; it is a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including European classical music....
, mouthbow
Musical bow

The musical bow is a simple string instrument musical instrument consisting of a string supported by a flexible string bearer, usually made out of wood....
, nyckelharpa
Nyckelharpa

A nyckelharpa is a traditional Sweden musical instrument. It is a string instrument or chordophone. Its keys are attached to tangents which, when the key is depressed, serve as frets to change the pitch of the string....
, hurdy gurdy
Hurdy gurdy

The hurdy gurdy is a stringed musical instrument in which the strings are sounded by means of a rosined wheel which the strings of the instrument pass over....
, rabab, rebec
Rebec

The rebec is a bowed string instrument musical instrument. In its most common form, it has three strings and is played on the arm or under the chin, like a violin....
, sarangi
Sarangi

The Sarangi is a bow , short-necked lute of the Indian subcontinent. It is an important bowed string instrument of India's Hindustani classical music tradition....
, viol
Viol

The viol is any one of a family of bow , fretted, stringed instruments musical instruments developed in the 1400s and used primarily in the Renaissance music and Baroque music periods....
, viola
Viola

The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.The casual observer may mistake the viola for the violin because of their similarity in size, closeness in pitch range , and nearly identical playing position....
, viola da braccio, viola d'amore
Viola d'amore

The viola d'amore is a 7- or 6-string instrument musical instrument with sympathetic strings used chiefly in the Baroque music. It is played under the chin in the same manner as the violin....
, viola da gamba and violin
Violin

The violin is a Bow string instrument with four strings usually tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola and cello....
.

Since bowed stringed instruments require a bow, this second category of luthier contains a subtype known as an "archetier
Archetier

An archetier is a French word for one who makes Bow s of the string family of instruments such as violin, viola, cello and double bass.Root of the word comes from Archet - pronounced - the bow...
", which is a French word for one who makes bows. While the division of luthiers into two categories may seem arbitrary, there are those who are passionate about the difference between these categories. For this reason, the remainder of this article will use the division for clarity and convenience.

Plucked strings


Lutes


Important luthiers who specialized in the instruments of the lute
Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....
 family (lutes, archlute
Archlute

The archlute is a European plucked string instrument developed around 1600 as a compromise between the very large theorbo, the size and re-entrant tuning of which made for difficulties in the performance of solo music, and the Renaissance tenor lute, which lacked the bass range of the theorbo....
s, theorbo
Theorbo

A theorbo is a plucked string instrument. As a name, theorbo signifies a number of long-necked lutes with second peg-boxes, such as the liuto attiorbato, the French th?orbe des pi?ces, the English theorbo, the archlute, the German baroque lute, the Ang?lique or angelica....
s, vihuela
Vihuela

Vihuela is a name given to two different guitar-like string instruments: one from 15th and 16th century Spain, usually with 12 paired strings, and the other, the Mexican vihuela, from 19th century Mexico with five strings and typically played in Mariachi bands....
s etc.):
  • Tieffenbrucker
    Tieffenbrucker

    Tieffenbrucker is a large multigenerational family of luthiers, originally from Bavaria, active mostly in Venice, Italy....
     family
  • Sellas family
  • Martin Hoffmann
    Martin Hoffmann (luthier)

    Martin Hoffmann is an important Germany luthier. He was the father of Johann Christian Hoffmann also an important luthier and a friend and associate of Johann Sebastian Bach....
  • Joachim Tielke
    Joachim Tielke

    Joachim Tielke was a Germany maker of musical instruments. He was born in K?nigsberg, Duchy of Prussia, and died in Hamburg.A publication was dedicated to him by G?nther Hellwig....
  • Leopold Widhalm
    Leopold Widhalm

    Martin Leopold Widhalm was an Austrian luthier.Born near Vienna, he worked on many old Bologna lutes that inspired his later work in his manufacture of lutes, violins and cello in Nuremberg, Germany between 1746 and 1776....
    ,
  • Sixtus Rauwolf
  • Michele Harton
  • Giovanni Tessler
  • Sebastian Schelle
  • Vendelio Venere


and in our time:
  • Andrew Rutherford
    Andrew Rutherford

    Andrew Rutherford is an American lutenist and luthier living and working in New York City. He is considered to be one of the most important makers of Renaissance and Baroque lutes, archlutes and theorbos....
  • Richard Berg
    Richard Berg

    Richard Berg is a prolific wargame designer, and recipient of the Charles S. Roberts Award in 1987. Notable games include SPQR and The Campaign for North Africa....
  • Cezar Mateus
    Cezar Mateus

    Cezar Mateus is an American lutenist, composer and luthier working in Princeton, New Jersey. He specializes in lutes, archlutes, theorbos and other related instruments....
  • Stephen Gottlieb
  • Grant Tomlinson
  • Ray Nurse inter alia


Guitars


Two important early luthiers in the guitar category are Antonio Torres Jurado
Antonio Torres Jurado

Antonio de Torres Jurado was a Spanish guitarist and guitar maker.Torres is as revered among guitarists as Antonio Stradivari is revered among violinists....
 of Spain, who is credited with developing the form of classical guitar
Classical guitar

The classical guitar, also known as the "Spanish guitar", and in more recent times as the "nylon string guitar" ? is a plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones....
 that is still in use today, and Christian Frederick Martin
Christian Frederick Martin

Christian Frederick Martin, Sr. was a luthier who specialized in guitars.Born in Markneukirchen, Germany to a family of cabinet makers, Martin became an apprentice of the guitar maker Johann Stauffer of Vienna, Austria....
 of Germany who developed a form which later evolved into the steel-string acoustic guitar.

Orville Gibson
Orville Gibson

Orville H. Gibson was a luthier who founded the Gibson Guitar Corporation in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1902, makers of guitars, mandolins and other instruments....
 was an American luthier who specialized in mandolins, and is credited with creating the archtop guitar
Archtop guitar

An archtop guitar is a steel-stringed acoustic guitar or semi-acoustic guitar guitar with a full body and a distinctive arched top, whose sound is particularly popular with blues and jazz players....
.

John D'Angelico and Jimmy D'Aquisto
Jimmy D'Aquisto

James L. D'Aquisto was an United States luthier best known as one of the premier makers of custom archtop guitars. He served as an apprentice to John D'Angelico in the early 1950s and was considered his successor after the latter's death in 1964....
 were two important 20th century luthiers who worked with archtop guitars.

Lloyd Loar
Lloyd Loar

Lloyd Allayre Loar was a Gibson Guitar Corporation sound engineer and master luthier in the early part of the 20th century. He is most famous for his F5 model mandolin, Gibson L5, H5 mandola, K5 mandocello, and A5 mandolin....
, worked briefly for the Gibson Guitar Corporation
Gibson Guitar Corporation

The Gibson Guitar Corporation, of Nashville, Tennessee, USA, is a manufacturer of Steel-string guitar and electric guitars. Gibson also owns and makes guitars under such brands as Epiphone, Kramer Guitars, Valley Arts Guitar, Tobias , Steinberger, and Gibson Kalamazoo Electric Guitar....
 making mandolins and guitars. His designs for a family of archtop instruments (mandolin, mandola, guitar, et cetera) are held in high esteem by today's luthiers, who seek to reproduce their sound.

Paul Bigsby
Paul Bigsby

Paul Adelburt Bigsby was the designer of the Bigsby vibrato tailpiece and proprietor of Bigsby Guitars. He built an early steel guitar for Southern California steel guitarist Earl "Joaquin" Murphy of Spade Cooley's band, then built an electric guitar conceptualized by Merle Travis to have the same level of sustain as a steel guitar by anch...
's innovation of the tremolo arm
Tremolo arm

A tremolo arm or tremolo bar is a lever attached to the bridge and/or the tailpiece of an electric guitar or archtop guitar to enable the player to quickly vary the tension and sometimes the length of the strings temporarily, changing the pitch to create a vibrato, portamento or pitch bend effect....
 for archtop and electric guitar
Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a type of guitar that uses pickup to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker....
s is still in use today and may have influenced Leo Fender's design for the Stratocaster solid body electric guitar
Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a type of guitar that uses pickup to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker....
, as well as the Jaguar
Fender Jaguar

The Fender Jaguar is an electric guitar which was introduced in 1962. Whether the designers of the Jaguar had intended the instrument to be used for Surf music or if it was a further attempt to break into the Jazz guitar market remains a topic of dispute among Jaguar aficionados....
 and Jazzmaster.

Concurrent with Fender's work, guitarist Les Paul
Les Paul

Les Paul is an American jazz guitarist and inventor. He is a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which "made the sound of rock and roll possible." His many recording innovations include overdubbing, Delay such as "sound on sound" and Delay , Phaser , and multitrack recording....
 independently developed a solid body electric guitar. However both Fender and Paul were preceded by Adolph Rickenbacher
Adolph Rickenbacher

Adolph Rickenbacker was the founder of the Rickenbacker guitar company.Born Adolf Rickenbacher in Switzerland. He settled in Los Angeles in 1928....
's Bakelite
Bakelite

Bakelite is a material based on the thermosetting plastic phenol formaldehyde resin polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, developed in 1907?1909 by Demographics of Belgium Dr....
 "frying pan
Frying pan (guitar)

The "Frying Pan" was the first electric guitar ever produced. The instrument was created in 1931 by George Beauchamp, and subsequently manufactured by Rickenbacker....
" solid body electric guitar developed with and patented by George Beauchamp
George Beauchamp

George D. Beauchamp , inventor of musical instruments and co-founder of National Stringed Instrument Corporation and Rickenbacker.Born in Texas, he played the violin and the lap steel guitar in vaudeville before his venture into the manufacturing of electric lap steel guitars, electric guitars, electric bass guitars, electric violins and c...
.

A company founded by luthier Friedrich Gretsch
Gretsch

Gretsch is a United States musical instrument manufacturer currently being distributed by guitar company Fender Musical Instruments Corporation and drum craft company Kaman Music....
 and continued by his son and grandson, Fred and Fred Jr., originally made banjos, but is more famous today for its electric guitars.

Bowed strings


To put the bowed stringed luthiers into some sort of manageable order, it is prudent to begin with the purported "inventor" of the violin, Andrea Amati
Amati

Amati is the name of a family of Italy violin makers, who flourished at Cremona from about 1549 to 1740.Family membersAndrea Amati...
. Amati was originally a lute maker but turned to the new instrument form of violin in the mid 16th century. He was the progenitor of the famous Amati family of luthiers active in Cremona
Cremona

Cremona is a city in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left shore of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana . It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments....
, Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
 until the 18th century. Andrea Amati's son, Nicolò, was himself an important master luthier who had several apprentices of note including Andrea Guarneri
Guarneri

Guarneri is the family name of a group of distinguished luthiers from Cremona in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries, whose standing is considered comparable to those of the Amati and Stradivari families....
, Francesco Ruggieri
Francesco Ruggieri

Francesco Ruggieri was perhaps an apprentice of Nicol? Amati, another important luthier in Cremona Italy. Although other sources call this association into question....
, Antonio Stradivari
Antonio Stradivari

Antonio Stradivari was an Italian luthier, a crafter of stringed instruments such as violins, cellos, guitars and harps. Stradivari is generally considered the most significant artisan in this field....
, Giovanni Battista Rogeri, Matthias Klotz
Klotz (violin makers)

Klotz is a family of violin makers. Members of the Klotz family have made violins in Mittenwald, Germany from the mid-1600s to the present. Dictionaries of violin makers list more than 25 artisans by this name....
 and possibly Jacob Stainer
Jacob Stainer

Jacob Stainer was the earliest and best known Austrian luthier.Stainer was born in Absam, Austria. His designs influenced instrument construction in Germany, parts of Italy and several other countries....
.

Two other important early luthiers of the violin family were Gasparo da Salò
Gasparo da Salò

Gasparo da Sal? is the name given to Gasparo di Bertolotti, one of the earliest luthier of which many and very detailed historical records exist....
 of Brescia
Brescia

Brescia is a city in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy. It is situated at the foot of the Alps, between the Mella and the Naviglio, with a population of around 190,000....
, Italy and Gasparo Duiffopruggar
Gasparo Duiffopruggar

Gasparo Duiffopruggar is the name given to instrument maker Kaspar Tieffenbrucker. It is believed that Duiffopruggar was born in Bavaria and had moved to Lyon, where he did most of his work, by 1553....
 of Austria
Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west....
 who were each originally credited with invention of the first violin. However, this attribute has since been removed but is still often incorrectly cited. da Salò had at least one important apprentice--Giovanni Paolo Maggini
Giovanni Paolo Maggini

Giovanni Paolo Maggini , was a luthier born in Botticino Italy. Maggini was a pupil of another important violin maker of the Brescian school, Gasparo da Sal?....
 who inherited da Salò's business in Brescia upon da Salò's death. Valentino Siani
Valentino Siani

Valentino Siani was an Italian violinmaker who worked in Brescia and Florence.He was a pupil of Giovanni Paolo Maggini in Brescia before he moved to Florence in c.1620 where he worked c.1620–1670....
 worked with Giovanni Paolo Maggini. In 1620 he moved to Florence.

Of those luthiers born in the mid 17th century, there are Giovanni Grancino
Giovanni Grancino

Giovanni Grancino , son of Andrea Grancino, was one of the early Milanese luthiers, and may have worked with brother, Francesco.Grancino's workshops were all located on Contrada Larga, now Via Larga in Milan....
, Carlo Giuseppe Testore
Carlo Giuseppe Testore

Carlo Giuseppe Testore was an Italy luthier who worked in his later life in Milan. He was born at Novara.Testore is noted in particular for his double basses....
 and son Carlo Antonio Testore, all from Milan
Milan

Milan is the second largest city of Italy, located in the plains of Lombardy. It is the capital in the Province of Milan, as well as the Regions of Italy capital of Lombardy....
. From Venice
Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy, the capital city of the Italian regions Veneto, a population of 271,251 . Together with Padua, Italy, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area ....
 the luthiers Matteo Goffriller
Matteo Goffriller

Matteo Goffriller was an Italy luthier, particularly noted for the quality of his cellos.Although it is known that Goffriller was born in Brixen, little else is known of him prior to his days in Venice before 1685....
, Domenico Montagnana
Domenico Montagnana

Domenico Montagnana was an Italian Master luthier based in Venice, Italy. He is regarded as one of the world's finest violin and cello makers of his time....
, Sanctus Seraphin
Sanctus Seraphin

Sanctus Seraphin was a financially successful luthier, working first in Udine Italy, then in his later life, Venice. Seraphin was another pupil who gained his knowledge of the trade from the Cremona luthier Nicol? Amati....
 and Carlo Annibale Tononi
Carlo Annibale Tononi

Carlo Annibale Tononi was a luthier who trained and worked with his father in the Tononi family workshop in Bologna Italy until his father, Johannes Tononi, died in 1713....
 were principals in the Venetian school of violin making (although the latter began his career in Bologna
Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, in the Po Valley , between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, exactly between the Reno River and the S?vena River....
). The Bergonzi
Bergonzi

Carlo Bergonzi was an Italian luthier who apprenticed with Amati, collaborated with Joseph Guarneri, and is considered the greatest pupil of Antonio Stradivari....
 family of luthiers were the successors to the Amati family in Cremona. David Tecchler
David Tecchler

David Tecchler was an Austrian luthier, best known for his cellos and double basses.Tecchler was born in Salzburg, Austria, where he worked for a time....
 who was born in Austria later worked in both Venice and Rome
Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
.

Important luthiers from the early 18th century include Nicolò Gagliano
Nicolò Gagliano

Nicolo Gagliano was an Italy violin-maker, the eldest son of Gagliano Family of Luthiers. He made many admirable instruments; often imitated. Some have been mistaken for those of Stradivari....
 of Naples
Naples

Naples is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old....
, Italy, Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi
Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi

Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi was a luthier active in Milan, Italy who may have been a pupil of Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, although other scholars suggest Landolfi was a pupil of the Testore family of luthiers....
 of Milan and Giovanni Battista Guadagnini
Giovanni Battista Guadagnini

Giovanni Battista Guadagnini was an Italy luthier, regarded as one of the finest craftsman of string instruments in history. His violins are often referred to as "poor man's Strads" which alludes to the work of Antonio Stradivari, who is generally considered to be the greatest violin maker of all time....
 who roamed throughout Italy during his lifetime. From Austria originally, Leopold Widhalm
Leopold Widhalm

Martin Leopold Widhalm was an Austrian luthier.Born near Vienna, he worked on many old Bologna lutes that inspired his later work in his manufacture of lutes, violins and cello in Nuremberg, Germany between 1746 and 1776....
 later established himself in Nürnberg
Nuremberg

Nuremberg is a city in the Germany State of Bavaria, in the Regierungsbezirk of Middle Franconia. It is situated on the Pegnitz River river and the Rhine?Main?Danube Canal and is Franconia's largest city....
, Germany
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
.

The early 19th century luthiers of the Mirecourt
Mirecourt

Mirecourt is a commune in France of the Vosges D?partements of France in France. It is located in the northeastern part of the country, and is known for lace-making and musical instrument building, particularly violins....
 school of violin making in France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 were the Vuillaume family, Charles Jean Baptiste Collin-Mezin
Charles Jean Baptiste Collin-Mezin

Charles Jean Baptiste Collin-Mezin was a distinguished France maker of violins, violas, cellos, Double bass and bows. He was an Officier de l'Acad?mie des Beaux-Arts and won gold and silver medals at the Paris Exhibitions in 1878, 1889, and 1900....
, and Collin-Mezin's son, Charles Collin-Mezin, Jr.
Charles Collin-Mezin, Jr.

Charles Collin-Mezin, Jr. was a French violin maker, and an Officier de l'Acad?mie des Beaux-Arts.He collaborated with his father Charles Jean Baptiste Collin-Mezin, a famous Parisian luthier....
.

Jérôme-Thibouville-Lamy was the most important musical instrument maker in France. The firm started making wind instruments around 1730 at La Couture-Boussey then moved to Mirecourt around 1760 and started making violins, guitars, mandolins and musical accessories. It was very successful, and opened offices in Paris, then in London. It made thousands of quality instruments that were exported throughout the world.

Violin Makers


16th-19th Century


20th Century


Contemporary


See also

  • Vintage guitar
    Vintage Guitar

    Vintage Guitar is a guitar magazine. The first issue came out in 1986. It is published monthly. Some of the writers for the magazine include Seymour W....


External links

  • a worldwide directory of guitar luthiers.
  • a short summary including answers to "why do old instruments sound so good..."
  • a Brazilian resource for guitar building, by Luthier Celso Freire.
  • a resource for guitar building.
  • Classical Guitar Museum,(UK)