The Art of Guitar. El Arte de la Guitarra.

Preface of the Book by José Luna Arnaldos:

“ARTISANS HAVE a special and almost esoteric place in society today. They have become <little> artists whose works are collected as if they were paintings or sculptures. There are still vestiges of the historical belief that without the personal touch of the artisan beauty was impossible.

Production in a factory has rendered hand- made products economically impractical but the factory still has much to learn from the artisan; his knowledge of the raw materials and his competent ways of working.
Every trade has its specific characteristics and planning the construction of a guitar finds its resolution in the fingers of the artisan, something that comes about through experimentation piece by piece. Fundamental to this experimentation is the experience of the artisan which serves in the evolution of a design within a painstaking production procedure involving the introduction of minor modifications, one after another. In short, the artisan must understand all aspects of visual literacy in order to come to technical and aesthetic perfection. Here before us in the following pages we have a photographic cxhibition, a document–perhaps an exceptional one- which deals with the process of the construction of a Spanish guitar and captures the aspects mentioned above. A document captured in situ, in the workshop of John Ray, an artisan of international prestige.”