1932 Domingo Esteso SP/CY

Year	1932
Top	Spruce
Back & Sides	Cypress
Scale Length	656 mm
Nut width	51 mm
Finish	French Polish
Country	Spain
Luthier	Domingo Esteso

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"Wa Habibi" (Traditional Lebanese Hymn) performed by Chris Fossek on a 1932 Domingo Esteso

Description

A 1932 peghead flamenco guitar by Domingo Esteso, with a spruce top and cypress back and sides, made in Madrid – a great piece of flamenco history, with a crack-free back.

In the video above, Chris Fossek plays his arrangement of the traditional Lebanese hymn "Wa Habibi" on this guitar.

A 1930s Peghead Flamenco

Even by modern standards the volume is plentiful, and the loose, woody, played-in sound is something only an instrument of this vintage can offer. It can be caressed to draw out a beautiful, singing lyricism, but when pushed just right it growls like an old-world flamenco.

Condition

It has several well-repaired cracks in the top and sides (the back has none), and the work has beautifully preserved its authentic sound. It plays easily for both hands – we hope its next owner draws the same inspiration from it as its previous owners clearly have.

Background

Domingo Esteso: From the Manuel Ramírez Workshop to Gravina 7

Domingo Esteso (1882–1937) is one of the great names of the early Madrid school of guitar making. Born on May 12, 1882, in San Clemente, in the province of Cuenca, he learned his trade in the Madrid workshop of Manuel Ramírez, where he worked alongside Santos Hernández, Modesto Borreguero and Enrique García – the shop that carried the legacy of Antonio de Torres into the 20th century. After Ramírez died in 1916, Esteso went on building for his widow, already with his own name on the labels, and around 1919 he opened his own workshop at Calle Gravina 7, where his wife, Nicolasa Salamanca, varnished the guitars. His flamencos were played by the great names of the day, among them Ramón Montoya and Niño Ricardo, and his classical guitars are prized today for their elegance, clarity and natural, woody voice.

Guitars for Buenos Aires and the Birth of the Conde Dynasty

Many of Esteso's finest guitars were made for Argentina, then one of the richest countries in the world, under a special label for Romero y Fernández of Buenos Aires, his sole agents there – some of them branded "Guitarras Iberia". In 1926 his nephew Faustino Conde joined the workshop, followed by his brothers Mariano and Julio. After Esteso's death in Madrid in 1937, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, they carried on at Gravina 7 as "Viuda y Sobrinos de Esteso" and later as Conde Hermanos – the start of a family tradition continued today by Felipe Conde and his son, Felipe Conde Crespo.