Between the 1950s and 1960s, José Ramírez III, filled several notebooks of graph paper with various designs for the mosaics of his guitars. Some of them became famous and were copied by guitar makers, but not by artisan guitar makers, as the mosaics are, like the headjoint, a hallmark of the author’s identity.
The rose mosaic guitar
When my father died, we lost those notebooks in which there were designs that we did not know, and we only used the mosaics that we had already made ourselves, but we were aware that there were many more that had been lost.
One day, at the end of the 1990s, one of our guitars arrived for repair with a beautiful mosaic of roses, designed with shades of red and orange that gave them a special charm. My brother, José Ramírez IV, took a high quality photograph of it and I was able to redo the design, and based on that we reproduced the beautiful mosaic again.
The mosaics of José Ramírez III
When my brother died, his wife Mª Egugenia Sanginés Allué found the notebooks in a cupboard in their house, one of those storage cupboards where things accumulate that you don’t know where to keep. And there was the original design of the rose mosaic.
We have printed that original design on a quality fan, the rods of which are made of pear wood, that we now offer as a unique piece for lovers of our mosaics, and of which we are making a first print run of 25 copies, to see what happens… We hope they will be a success and perhaps we will reproduce them again.
Written by Amalia Ramírez.
