My Background
Music and the guitar have been a very important part of my life since I started playing the classical guitar at the age of thirteen. It has been through this experience of the instrument that my ideas about the guitar have developed.
I studied English Literature at university, but after completing these studies I decided that I would teach myself to make guitars. I made my first instrument in the garage at home - a cold, but invaluable, experience - before moving to my current workshop near Goring-on-Thames, in Oxfordshire.
From the outset I have been greatly indebted to the help and advice of Christopher Dean, with whom I made contact before starting to make guitars, and who has been instrumental in my development. In the summer of 2007, I attended the guitar-making course run by Josh and Liam Romanillos in Sighenza, Spain, and learnt a great deal from their method of construction and ideas about sound, and about the selection of high-quality wood.