Ervin Somogyi
[3] Building primarily high-end steel-string guitars that sell for over $30,000 each, Somogyi cultivates a clientele of serious musicians—such as the late John Denver and Michael Hedges, and fingerstyle master Alex de Grassi—as well as collectors who buy his instruments as investments.
[3] Recording artists such as Daniel Hecht[4] and George Winston list Somogyi as the builder of their guitars for several past and present albums.
[5] Working in his Temescal district shop, he creates exactly one handmade, steel-string acoustic guitar per month, twelve annually (he doesn't take vacations), [more than] 456 since he started in the early 1970s.
[6] Before Sloane, wrote Barbara Stewart in The New York Times, "Anyone interested in guitar construction had to find a luthier [an expert craftsman of stringed instruments] — usually in Spain, Germany or Belgium — and try to become his apprentice.
He bought tools at flea markets and labored with great deliberation for one year in his rented room at 1738 Grove Street in Berkeley — sawing, gluing, clamping, bending, filing, sanding, shaping, worrying, exulting.
Music Co. Daniel Hecht, "Willow", Windham Hill Records Maggie Sansone, "Dulcimer and Guitar" Alan Tower, "The Understory - Messages of Intimacy From the Thinking Earth", Geomantic Music Michael Hedges, "Breakfast In The Field", Windham Hill Records 8th Avenue String Band, "On Stage", 8th Ave.
The California Guitar Trio, "Pathways", "Rocks the West", Discipline (GM); Isato Nakagawa, "Wind From the Sun", Naniwa Records; "It’s Time For Tea", Sony Music Peta, "Majin No Mizuumi", "Powder Snow", Sailing Ice Music Somogyi's woodworking designs arise out of stringed instrument building tradition and aesthetic.
These inlaid mosaic patterns are a form of fret ornamentation, an effect made by laying pieces of material of the same size next to one another and thereby producing a design.
The display was connected by a well-organized narrative signage that made otherwise dry woodworking processes intelligible and interesting to the public.
