Classical Guitar Rosette Gallery

Current Design from Guitar No. 51
This is the most updated version of the rosette design I plan to use on my main model.

The Maple Guitar Rosette
Chaos surrounds order - the conglomerate inner ring surrounded by a traditional mosaic border.

Guitar Rosette No. 40
The final iteration of my octagonal rosette design. It's not for people who have a fear of sharp edges.

Guitar Rosette No. 37
The first iteration of my octagonal rosette was inlaid by hand with a razor blade a chisel.

Guitar Rosette No. 25
This my first mosaic border design surrounding a wood conglomerate. Any guesses on what makes the center ring?

Guitar Rosette No. 27
Using a chevron motif around the conglomerate inner ring

Lucky Rosette No. 13
Probably my most advanced effort at the segmented inner ring. It takes lots of time to create a border around each segment

Guitar Rosette No. 24
This is the inaugural rosette design used on most of my early guitars.

Guitar Rosette No. 16
The segmented design using a walnut burl

Guitar Rosette No. 26
This one was highly improvisatory. It's me playing around with whatever little slivers of wood I had available at the time.

Guitar Rosette No. 28
This guitar was the first attempt I made at a conglomerate inner ring. It's a mixture of ebony and purple heart

Guitar Rosette no. 20
A walnut burl surrounded by the traditional wheat border

Guitar Rosette No. 50
Segmented, spalted chesnut oak inner ring

What you see here is the product of much stress and the origin of new and colorful curse words. I am sure that all the handmade classical guitar rosette designs pictured on this page are fairly simple and easy to make compared to some, but each was a learning experience and presented their own challenge for me.

The rosette is a signature for a classical guitar builder - a focal point of craftsmanship and an article of conversation that can exist beyond the playability and sound of the classical guitar. So it is surely understanding that a luthier, early in her career, would give the responsibility of this task to someone set up solely for that purpose alone. A few years ago I was running out of excuses for using those beautiful handmade Russian rosettes you will find on guitars 2-6. Although beautiful, they are not my handiwork and I had already placed so much labor in creating my own binding and purfling.

I was waiting. Surely the perfect moment would come along when, perhaps in my sleep, or on the road, I would have a true moment of inspiration and it would birth a design that would be unique beyond all argument and the rest would just take care of itself.

The interesting thing - The very moment I set out to tackle this task, I had only a very vague idea where I wanted to go with it. I merely started with a handful of wood that I hoped matched and then proceeded with milling and gluing... eyeballing the alignment of colors and shapes...and having faith that a process would emerge. Luckily things came together, and even though it took me half of a week to complete and inlay the first three rosettes of my own design, like the ones pictured in this post, I was left with a design that is both beautiful and that worked as a starting point for some of the other rosette ideas you see in the gallery.

Sometimes you have to just dive in and start, even when your not sure where to begin or where your going. Learning is a process, the greatest enemy of which - is perfection.

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Classical Guitar Rosette Gallery