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 My “sculptural-functional” instruments, incorporating extraordinary craftsmanship with contemporary combinations of woods, create a modern rendering that draws from ancient roots. I personally handcraft each of my one-of-a-kind instruments to be a unique melding of art and music.
Throughout my entire life, I have so admired those who could create things of beauty. These “things of beauty” could be paintings or music or jewelry or poetry or musical instruments, etc. As I studied and taught history for over thirty years, again and again I came upon people in the past who had created beauty: Mozart, Shakespeare, Michelangelo to mention but a few. To me the truly awesome wonder of this is that artists are able, through their creation of “things of beauty,” to give pleasure and joy to people irrespective and independently of their own existence. We still thrill to the beauty created by Bach, Milton, and da Vinci, and they have been gone for centuries.
My creative passion, fueled by wood and music, led me in the mid-1970sto the making of fine wooden musical instruments. I love wood with itsinfinite variety of hues, textures, and grain patterns. For myinstruments, I am judicious and uncompromising in selection of thefinest domestic and exotic highly figured woods – woods with“character.”
Splitting then book-matching the pieces enhance the “character” and uniqueness of the wood even more by generating a mirror image effect that is often quite striking. Cross-sections of black walnuts as well as inlays are used on some of the instruments to enhance further the uniqueness and beauty. The painstaking construction process is followed by an equally painstaking finish of multicoats of lacquer. Through this process I produce museum quality instruments in which the visual beauty of the wood, the haunting sound of the strings, and the subtle feel of the vibrating wood combine to offer multisensory stimulation. Because so much of myself goes into my instruments, I sign, date, and number each of my bowed psalteries and dulcimers.
I am not so arrogant and brash as to place myself among the ranks of the great masters, but I believe that I, too, create “things of beauty,” and that these things of beauty will give pleasure and joy to people now and long after I am gone. I can think of no greater honor than this, for I will have made a difference in the lives of people.
The poet Keats summed it up best when he wrote, “A Thing of Beauty is a Joy forever.”
Archie Smith
Archie Smith Instruments
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| All content Copyright of Archie Smith Instruments © 2005, All Rights Reserved | Last Update:3/26/2008 | Site Design Origin Visual Design |
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