Description
This Antonio Torres 1857 Tornavoz guitar was made by Antonio Torres.
He was born on the 13th of June 1817 in Almería, Andalucía and died on the 19th of November 1892.
He was a Spanish guitarist and luthier, considered «the most important Spanish guitar maker of the 19th century.
His design initiates in a unique way the time of modern classical guitars.
Most acoustic guitars in use today are derivatives of his designs.
Antonio Torres 1857 Tornavoz guitar :
This guitar has a genuine early first-time label like all Torres guitars until 1859.
The Antonio Torres 1857 Tornavoz guitar has a gorgeous Brazilian rosewood selection for back and sides.
The woods are of the same quality like the ones used for the most famous Torres guitar owned by Miguel Llobet FE 09 made in1859.
In the same way, this guitar has 4 pieces back and an original Tornavoz like we find in the FE 09.
So, if we consider body dimensions, this Antonio 1857 guitar Tornavoz is the little sister of the Llobet guitar.
Details and condition :
Like in most Torres guitars, the joint point is not in the center: in this guitar, it is close to the 5 string «A».
Again like in many original Torres, the grainline direction is not perfectly parallel to the strings one.
In this guitar, it’s a little bit angled to the right (2-3 degree).
The design of the rosette is quite unique but it shows the strong influence in Torres’s work of the Cadiz tradition.
The overall dimension of this Torres is similar to a Pages guitar.
Purfling and rosette design is quite simple but very elegant.
Enrique Garcia converted in 1902 the head of the guitar from pegs to tuning machines.
He made also an ebony fingerboard replacement on the top of the original one. He wrote inside the guitar the improvements made by him.
One can see clearly the touch in the restoration of the most important Catalan guitar maker Enrique Garcia.
The design of the head oval ramps clearly shows the work of Garcia.
