For over a century, the José Ramírez III family has been making guitars, perhaps the best in the world. Behind the rise of this luthier dynasty, however, there is a little-known story of dedication and great craftsmanship. It began in 1882, when José Ramírez I, his known disciple of Francisco Gonzáles, the great Spanish luthier of the XNUMXth century, opened the first workshop in Calle Cava Baja together with his younger brother Manuel.
Towards the end of the century, always working from sunrise to sunset, sawing long wooden planks by hand and shaping the finished parts over a kind of smoky brazier, the two brothers displayed – unlike other luthiers – an unmatched skill. They made bigger and bigger guitars to give the instrument a greater resonance with great attention to detail. They founded the most famous school of luthiers in Madrid, and their students were personalities such as Domingo Esteso, Enrique García and Julian Gomez Ramírez.
The art of luthier has been handed down from father to son in the Ramírez family, and this is how his son José began his apprenticeship when he was only ten years old. The construction of a guitar is in equal measure a work of art and technique. He stated "It is not necessary for a luthier to know how to play the guitar" "because in fact it takes a double dedication and two professions cannot be done in an excellent way". When his father died in 1957, he took over the family business, without a shadow of a doubt he had the ability to "hear" the sign as if it were already music in his blood. The Ramírezes used five types of wood: spruce from Canada, Europe, and Siberia for the instrument's soundboard, Cuban cedar for the neck, sturdy Indian ebony for the fingerboard, and South American gold for the background. Spain's famed artisan tradition is in good hands with Ramírez “Spain and Madrid must not lose the primacy of home to the best guitars, and like a work of art, its value will remain forever.
Many painters have been inspired by the guitar, which participates as an object of "harmony" in many still life paintings, to the point of becoming a plastic work for many sculptors. The imagination of their sound makes any work a concert of emotions.
