Tom Sands brought the lessons he learnt from the California king of guitar-making back to Britain, where he makes stunning, personalised instruments for his clients. Tessa Waugh reports, photographs by Richard Cannon.
‘I’ve always made things,’ muses luthier Tom Sands. ‘When I was 16, my best friend asked me to make him an electric guitar in return for teaching me how to play. It didn’t occur to me that you could make guitars for a living.’
Having forged a successful career as a furniture maker, Mr Sands began to feel unsatisfied. He contacted the world-renowned king of guitar-making Ervin Somogyi in California and, to his surprise, Mr Somogyi invited him to interview for a position as his apprentice. He describes his teacher, who reinvented the modern acoustic steel-string guitar as ‘an elite maker. A cross between Gandalf, Yoda and Mr Miyagi from The Karate Kid’.
Mr Sands was in California for two years: ‘It was probably the most intense period of my life.’ He came away with the skills to produce Mr Somogyi’s level of work on British soil and now sells to collectors and musicians, collaborating with clients to produce instruments to their exact specifications.
Each guitar involves about 200 hours of work: ‘You make this beautiful object, but you don’t know if you’ve been successful until you put the strings on. That’s the moment when it comes alive.’
Mr Sands describes himself as walking a knife edge between performance and reliability. ‘The braces have to be strong enough to hold the guitar together and loose enough for the top to vibrate and produce the sound,’ he explains. ‘Remove too much material and the guitar will collapse; remove too little and it will sound like shutting a barn door.’
He’s recently employed Daisy Tempest, daughter of Tottering’s Annie, as his creative assistant. A fellow enthusiast, Miss Tempest simply says: ‘I’m learning from the best.’
To find out more about Tom’s guitars, read his client’s stories or to purchase one for yourself, visit www.tomsandsguitars.com.
The Pigeon Fancier: ‘I set up a deckchair in the garden and wait for them to come back. That’s the most exciting part.’
This week’s Living National Treasure is Colin Hill, a pigeon fancier whose birds regularly race from the tip of Scotland
The dry stone wall builder: ‘Every metre of wall contains a ton of stone. You really feel it after a hard week.’
This week's Living National Treasure is Anthony Gorman, a man who has spent his life building beautiful walls by hand
The Florist: ‘What I do is like good cooking – if you have beautiful ingredients, you can’t go wrong’
This week's Living National Treasure is royal florist Shane Connolly – and while he might be based in Britain, he's
The gold stamper: ‘The younger generation is very appreciative of artisan work – they’re the ones driving the trend’
This week's Living National Treasure is John Timms, the man who leads the team that stamps gold lettering into thousands
The Glassblower: ‘When something goes wrong you can’t fix it – you just sling in into the bosh bucket and start again’
Ian Shearman's team of glassblowers are still making glass using a technique that's 2,000 years old. Mary Miers found out
