The Luthier's Tale

​A luthier is a person who builds or repairs stringed instruments such as guitars or violins. Our speaker on the evening of 23rd January, Dave Best (LRPS), gave us a very interesting and enjoyable talk entitled The Luthier's Tale. Dave's style was very relaxed, engaging, clear and reassuringly positive and confident. His talk was in two parts. 
 
In the first section, Dave exhibited a range of his photographs, often in black and white to minimise the inevitable "busyness" of such images, of rock and folk guitarists, violinists etc on stage. There was even a photograph of an artist playing a hurdy gurdy, an instrument which many of us had never seen before. Dave has attended many rock and folk concerts over the years and some of the photographs were of well-known artists such as Andy Fairweather Low, Steve Harley, Louden Wainwright 111 (father of Rufus and Martha), Richard Thompson and Steeleye Span. We all appreciated the quality of Dave's photographs - particularly our own resident gig photographer, Paul Dunn.
 
The second section of Dave's talk was about a project he had undertaken between 2008 and 2010 with a Newcastle-based luthier called Nigel Forster (Nigel now lives on the Gold Coast in Australia). Nigel was originally from Hexham and learned his trade from Stephan Sobel, a luthier from Whitley Chapel. Nigel had contacted Dave regarding a book he wanted to produce about how he went about his work, and he wanted Dave, whose work he had seen on Dave's website, to take the photographs for the book. Dave showed us many of his photographs, and showed us the book resulting from the project, which high-lighted the quality and painstaking nature of Nigel's work as a luthier.
 
Nigel produced a range of guitar types, mandolins, bouzouki's etc to order and spent weeks building and perfecting them. He used maple for his sound boards and spent an inordinate amount of time and patience perfecting the instruments, so that they met the exact requirements of the customers. Dave believed that Mark Knopfler owned a couple of guitars which he had ordered from Nigel. It was fascinating to see, through Dave's excellent photographs, the detailed work which goes into making top quality, bespoke instruments.
 
Dave received an enthusiastic round of applause, and we all agreed that it had been an enjoyable and entertaining evening.
 
Ray Barnes
Programme Secretary