2017 Federico Sheppard "Camino" SP/CSAR

A 2017 "Camino" classical guitar by Federico Sheppard, with a spruce top and CSA rosewood back and sides, made in Carrión de los Condes on the Camino de Santiago.

In the video above, Peter Fletcher plays Walton's Bagatelle No. 2 on this guitar.

The Scallop Shell

The first thing one notices is the scallop shell: carved in the head (à la Francisco Simplicio, one of Federico's heroes), engraved on the custom Alessi tuners and inlaid in the rosette and tie block. The shell is the most common symbol along the pilgrimage – it marks posts and signs to guide the way, and pilgrims wear it on their clothes, packs or around their necks – so the guitar truly carries the spirit of the Camino.

Pilgrim Country

Carrión de los Condes lies about midway between Burgos and León, right on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela walked since the Middle Ages; the area is full of Romanesque churches and castles. Having walked it three times, Federico infuses its history and pilgrim culture into his "Camino" series.

Sound

The guitar's sound and playability belong to the golden age of the Madrid and Barcelona schools: singing, dark and mysterious, perfect for Spanish repertoire of around 1900.

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.