Restorations



Enrique García
Bandurria 1905
Enrique García was born in 1868 in Madrid, Spain, where he learned the art of guitar making from his father Juan. He later became Manuel Ramírez’s big store man. In 1893, he entered one of his instruments in the Chicago World’s Fair and won first prize. In 1895, he moved to Barcelona and started his own store. There, he trained his only apprentice, Francisco Simplicio, who would become a great guitar builder in his own right.


Antigua Casa Nuñez
Guitar 1929
In 1858, a Spanish immigrant named Francisco Nuñez, arrived in Argentina and settled in Buenos Aires with the desire to become the best guitar maker in the country. Around 1870, he conceived the formation of the company, then called Fabrica de Guitarras Francisco Nuñez y Cia.
In 1894, he set up his premises and offices at 1620/28 Cuyo Street (now Sarmiento Street) and the workshops at 7079 Rivadavia Street in the neighborhood of Flores, dedicated to the manufacture of guitars and stringed instruments such as bandurrias, mandolins and others, as well as tuning pegs and accessories in general.
Francisco Nuñez died in 1919, and his widow and nephew took over the business. In 1925, the name of the company was changed to Antigua Casa Nuñez.


Ignacio Fleta
(31-7-1897) (11-8-1977)
He is widely regarded as one of the leading guitar makers in the history of the instrument and is sometimes described as the Stradivarius, or Steinway, of the guitar. Born into a family of cabinetmakers, he initially built stringed instruments and throughout the 20th century, he was promoted by guitarists such as Andrés Segovia, John Williams and Alirio Diaz.

Vicente Arias
(Alcázar de San Juan, October 27, 1833)
Son of Juan Arias and Bernabea Castellanos, he was the eldest of six siblings. Vicente was eighteen years old, lived in Ciudad Real with his parents and worked as an apprentice in a cabinetmaker’s workshop. Around 1875 he began to be known as a famous cabinetmaker and guitar builder and owned his own workshop on Paloma Street in Ciudad Real. Between 1878 and 1879 the already well-known guitarist and composer Francisco Tárrega asked Arias to make a guitar smaller than the normal canon so that it could be better adapted to his physical and artistic characteristics; the result was so satisfactory that from then on he made this new standard size and created a school. In the years 1898 and 1900 his name began to appear in the commercial guides or Yearbooks of the Bailly-Baillière Trade as a guitar maker in Ciudad Real. In the later editions he appears with residence in Madrid, where he moved his business, since most of his guitars were sold in the capital of the kingdom and he had to move them there. He set up his workshop in Santa Isabel Street, 20, and his private residence in Alamo Street, 3, where he lived until his death on January 19, 1914.