The Guitar Salon welcomes your inquiries into any of the guitars listed in my current collection of classical and flamenco guitars.
Photographer: Joyce Culver |
You are seeing a portion of The Guitar Salon. The room is 20' x 30' with a 16' ceiling, wooden plank floors and a working fireplace. All the instruments displayed in this room are from my private collection.
I'll give you a quick tour. From left to right: Top - balalaika below - sarangi (bowed Indian instrument). Above and around the fireplace - many 19th century guitars. Above the fireplace - lyre guitar. This is from the ancient Greek kithara - kithar - guitar. Through verbal transposition and modification we arrive at the guitar. The big bass alongside the sofa is a one of a kind console. It has a playable bass fiddle, knobs, for the radio inside, and the top opens up to a windup Victrola. The next wall has posters of the three famous Cremona violins, a Greek bouzouki, mandolin and on the shelf an ancient guitar by "Fabricatore". Next on the floor, a harp-guitar, a lute and above an old Pennsylvania Dutch zither.
On the piano is a bandoneon, (accordion of Argentina) and a regular accordion. In front of the piano is a guitar by the violin maker, "Guadinini" and a theorbo (precursor to the lute). In the middle of the floor is "Frets."
There are three other walls with a vina from India, koto from Japan, dital harp from England, a pochette (pocket violin used by dance masters), a boxwood clarinet, an oboe, a viola d'amore, a mandora (miniature lute) and lots of old pictures of people playing instruments.
Photographer: Joyce Culver |
My most prized possession, in a glass case, is a 12" long miniature guitar. A craftsman's guild piece, built in the early 1800's by the violin maker, "F.W. Meinel", signed in the heel block. The rosette is adorned with abalone and a rose is inlaid on the little fingerboard. There's ivory and mother of pearl--- you have to see it. I bought it at Christie's auction, held that paddle up until it was mine.
Photographer: Joyce Culver |
Left of the fireplace (L. to R.): bassoon; boxwood flute; dital harp; balalaika. Below: Indian vina and 2 sarangis.
Photographer: Joyce Culver |
Across from the fireplace. Top: English banjo; Balkan tamboritza; Javanese spike fiddle. Below: Very ancient, primitive Alaskan instrument; Balinese fiddle; heart shaped, bowed zither (played on a flat table); Tarrega picture; Portugese guitar (rosette of 2 hearts); On the table: koto. All of the exotic fiddles are held between the legs or on the lap and bowed.
Photographer: Joyce Culver |
Top (L. to R.): violin (inlays front & back); zither; kemenche(Greek fiddle). Middle: picture of Segovia statue; another kemenche; very old picture of a woman playing a theorbo; pouchette (a small dance master's fiddle, from the "Cremona School of Violin Making"); 18th century mandora; and last looking like a minature lute, a 20th century Mandora, also from Cremona. My favorite is a sequence of eight shots of me having animated conversation with Segovia, at his last master class at Manhattan School of Music. He died the following month.
By Christopher Gray, The New York Times
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