On the 22nd, music photographer Eleanor Jane of Eleven Magazine, flew up from Los Angeles for the day to shoot selected guitars in the Austin-Marie Collection at the Falkirk Mansion in San Rafael, California. Eleanor had traveled from the UK to attend the NAMM event in Anaheim. Having photographed many of the world’s leading rock and blues guitar legends and with her work appearing in leading publications ranging from Guitar Player to the Guardian, she and her publishing crew thought it would be an interesting departure to chronicle the historical guitar prior to 1900. Guitars chosen for the shoot ranged in age from a mid-seventeenth-century Italian chitarriglia to a guitar dated 1860 by the spanish maker, Antonio de Torres.
Eleven Magazine: click here
The following week, I traveled to London to attend British author Sarah Clarke’s book signing event at Guildhall. Sarah is a member of the Cambridge Consortium for Guitar Research and her newest publication, The Periodicals of Ferdinand Pelzer 1833-1857, is an amalgamation of three periodicals that trace the work of one of the leading figures in the early Victorian guitar scene. Pelzer was a writer, composer, performer, renowned teacher, and also the father of two of the Victorian era’s most notable performers and educators, Madame Sidney Pratten and Giulia King-Church. The evening included period performances by guitarist Declan Hickey and was highlighted by the appearance of two of Giulia King-Church’s great great grandchildren. I also squeezed in a visit to the Kenwood House to view Vermeer’s The Guitar Player. I returned home from my brief three-day stay with an original c. 1770 five-course guitar by Gérard Deleplanque in tow to add to the AMC.
Sarah’s book is available at Boydell & Brewer: click here
