2010 Federico Sheppard "1934 Esteso - ex Barrios" SP/CSAR

A 2010 "1934 Esteso – ex Barrios" classical guitar by Federico Sheppard, with a spruce top and CSA rosewood back and sides – a replica of the Domingo Esteso that was reportedly Barrios's favorite guitar.

Barrios's Esteso

Barrios bought the original directly from the Esteso workshop at Gravina 7 in late December 1935 or early January 1936, after his patron Tomás Salamoni gave him six months' living expenses. Its rosette and purfling, of very fine quality, include the flags of Spain and Argentina, so it was surely meant for Buenos Aires, where many of the finest Esteso guitars were sent. After Barrios's death it passed to a coffee planter's wife and then through several hands; damaged beyond restoration in the Salvadoran Civil War, when a machine gun was set on its case, it has been seen by very few people since 1990.

Pulsation

Every construction detail comes from the original, including hand-made tuners replicated by Nicolò Alessi. These Barrios replicas were first made for an exhibition at the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels, for the concerts marking the 75th anniversary of the only formal concert Barrios gave in Europe, on November 7, 1934. As an instrument it plays and sounds fantastic, and it even has what players call "pulsation" – vibration felt through the body, normally found only in older guitars.

Federico Sheppard: Luthier and Barrios Scholar

Federico Sheppard was born in Mexico City in 1955 and grew up in Pittsburgh. A geologist and later a sports-medicine chiropractor, he has built guitars since the late 1970s, and today he divides his time between Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Carrión de los Condes in northern Spain, where his workshop occupies a thousand-year-old church that is also a guitar school and concert hall; there he founded the Asociación Caminoartes. He writes and lectures for the Guild of American Luthiers, and one of his guitars appears in Sheldon Urlik's "A Collection of Fine Spanish Guitars".

The Guitars of Barrios and the Camino

Since 2005 Federico has studied the life and guitars of Agustín Barrios Mangoré. He has seen and measured the six main concert guitars Barrios played – two Simplicios, a "Morant", a José Ramírez I, a Sanfeliu and an Esteso – and builds replicas of them, inside and out. His "Camino" guitars draw on the art and pilgrim culture of the Camino de Santiago, which runs past his Spanish workshop.