2019 Federico Sheppard "Camino" SP/CSAR

A 2019 "Camino" classical guitar by Federico Sheppard, with a spruce top and CSA rosewood back and sides, built in his workshop in Carrión de los Condes, Spain.

The Camino de Santiago

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. Federico has walked the whole trail three times and loves its artistic history, mystical tradition and pilgrim culture, which he weaves into his "Camino" guitars.

The Pantocrator of Carrión

The checkerboard theme comes from the borders around the church doors of Carrión, and the image of Christ is the "Pantocrator", ruler of the universe, from the stone carving above the doorway of the church of Santiago – now the town's historical museum – regarded as the finest stone carving between Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and the cathedral of Santiago. Shells, walking sticks and drinking gourds, the age-old symbols of the route, appear in the rosette, tuners and bridge, and the colors are those of the summer meseta – wheat, rye and sunflowers – with the red of the Spanish poppy.

A Golden-Age Sound

Built from wood Federico has gathered over decades, the guitar belongs in sound, tone and playability to the early 20th-century schools of Madrid (Manuel Ramírez, Santos Hernández, Domingo Esteso) and Barcelona (García, Simplicio). Its singing, dark, mysterious voice is perfect for Spanish music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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.