2015 François Leonard CD/IN

A 2015 classical guitar by François Leonard, with a cedar top and Indian rosewood back and sides – the first cedar-top guitar we had from him.

In the video above, Olivia Chiang plays Albéniz's "Mallorca" on this guitar.

Our First Cedar Leonard

It has the same punch and quality of sound as the spruce guitars we had seen before, with an added darkness and warmth in each note. Every register is plump and full-bodied, the sound is nuanced and expressive, and there is plenty of power for the concert hall.

Acoustics and French Polish

François studies acoustics and psychoacoustics and meets regularly with acousticians. Influenced by Daniel Friederich and Dominique Field, he builds with double sides and finishes every guitar in French polish, which he describes as a kind of meditation.

François Leonard: A French Luthier in Lorient

François Leonard was born in Nantes, France, in 1973. After studying the guitar for a few years he moved to England in 1995, at 22, to learn guitar making at the Newark School under Roy Courtnall, and stayed five years, also building traditional instruments such as the Swedish nyckelharpa and the hammered dulcimer. In 2006 he set up his own workshop in Lorient, Brittany.

Lakewood, Tobias Berg and Dominique Field

Around 2000 he moved to Germany, where for five years he worked at Lakewood Guitars alongside Tobias Berg, in charge of body construction on several thousand guitars – learning above all how to choose tops and hear their thicknesses – and where Michel Brück taught him French polishing. In the French tradition of Daniel Friederich and Dominique Field, whom he visits regularly, he builds with double sides, and he meets with acousticians to add science to the intuitive side of his craft.