Biography
Grown up on the Slovenian coast of Istra, in simple and serene sorrundings where active music making played an important role, I received my first musical fundaments at the age of eight, when I started to learn the clarinet. I was ten and a half years old when I had to move to Italy, in the Florentine province, where the general level of music making did not go much further than ringing the doorbell. Not to be discouraged, stealing time from scholastic learning and engaging in all sorts of jobs (say, leather crafting, clock repairing, photography – or at least the bit that was carried out in the darkroom), in order to scratch together the necessary pennies, I bought my first guitar and at sixteen, and as an autodidact, I started to learn the classical guitar, a passion which was to accompany me for the next twenty years. With twentytwo years of age and a completely useless diploma in economics and accounting in the wastepaper bin, I started to roam around the world, carrying an Irish tinwhistle in my pocket when the guitar became too cumbersome.
Between Manchester and Rome I had the good luck of learning the fundaments of woodworking from an Irish carpenter and, more or less at the same time, began to discover the modern guitar trascriptions of music originally written for the lute. Within a short time, lute making, at first just a passionate hobby, became the natural development of such a fortunate coincidence.
Well, come to think of instrument making: as far back as I can remember, already as a child, I started carrying a penknife in my pocket, most likely as soon as I started to wear pockets (it was a present from my older cousin Mario, son to one of the two smith uncles in my family: may you keep forging beauty for ever, mate!), a penknife with which I used to make myself simple reed kazoos or somewhat more refined like slide whistles, well before I knew how to spell the word musical instrument).
Lute making as a hobby was the best precondition for leisurely and serious study and research on original instruments from various collections, and for experimenting with models and materials, free from marketing pressure. The result was that, when hobby finally turned to profession at the beginning of the 80s, my instruments were satisfactory enough to grant steady work ever since. After good ten years activity in Rome I moved to Bremen, only to close the circle for good, after seventeen fruitful years, retiring to Dekani, on the Slovenian coast, in the summer of 2009, where I continued to build until autumn 2020.
Vivi lieto.
