ron fernandez wrote: >I have tried to find when João Miguel Andrade was building. > >I have consulted the 400 page work entitled, A Guitarra Portuguesa, 1999 >written by Pedro Caldeira Cabral (1999); A Guitarra: bosquejo histórico, >by Armando Simões (1974), Instrumentos Musicais Poulares Portugueses, by >Ernesto Veiga de Oliveira (2000). These are the major books on this >subject. There is no reference to João Miguel Andrade. > >I am not sure what to do with this lack of information on him. The label >gives his name and then says "Fabrica e Amazem de Instrumentos de Corda" >which means "Factory and Store of String Instruments". > >Was he really just a store. The label does not say he was a constructor. > >Does anyone out there have any other information? > > >
No information, just a hunch. I read the label as you do - and Portuguese music stores still trade in the same way, and so did British importers in the period involved. 'Maker and Seller' was a common term. As you will know, the present situation is that Portuguese guitars are sourced from a wide variety of makers, including Chinese today. My low-level purchase ($250 or so) from Lisbon was unidentifiable in origin, but Salaomusical told me they buy them from small workshops which are anonymous. One month, your basic level guitarra might be from one maker, the next month, some have come in from another. They get the music shop's label. The Andrade looks, to me, very similar to the original Simpson guittar which is supposed to be the grandfather of the guitarra if John Pearse is correct. He suggested that my (unlabelled, unsigned) late 1700s guittar was by Simpson because its body shape and depth so closely resembled the earliest Portuguese examples. Your instrument is little changed from these. But my Waldzither is not so different either. I suspect the Andrade could be German, but what happened in London? Up to 1820, makers were producing instruments of this size and shape. Trade with Portugal was a big thing. Ships would have been leaving from London daily throughout the 19th c. Maybe some of those makers in London ceased to make 'English guitars' for the home market and kept turning out the same item, modified a little, for the Portuguese market. And how did the fantail-tuned Waldzither suddenly appear in Germany with mechanism clearly identical in all major aspects to the Portuguese tuner? Perhaps instruments were being made there for export, bringing familiarity with the design and fittings, which Bohm then adapted to earlier wald/holz/zither traditions. David To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
