About:
I have been making instruments of the lute family for over thirty years now, building all types of renaissance and baroque instruments from plain and unadorned to highly decorated. I can make any instrument to your commission. I have customers all over the world - Europe, the United States, South America, Australia and Japan.
I have considerable experience of restoring old lutes to both playing condition and museum standards. I also carry out repairs to modern instruments. Cases are made to measure by a well-established specialist case maker. My instruments are lightly constructed, the backs built on solid wooden moulds in the traditional way, and are made typically with yew, maple or fruitwood backs and occasionally ebony, rosewood or kingwood. Soundboards are of well-seasoned European spruce. Decoration can be in materials such as ebony, snakewood, satinwood, sandalwood, boxwood, horn and bone, and I like to use water-gilt details in roses and on carved Baroque lute pegbox designs.
I trained as an architect, and taught myself lutemaking by studying, measuring and drawing original old instruments in many of the British and European collections. My work is closely based on this research, and varies from direct copies and lutes in a regional or a particular maker's style, to original designs of my own. My aim is to follow the proportions, constructional concepts and materials (including the all-important strings) used in the golden age of these great instruments.
