It took almost a year to receive news about this one
During the weekend, I received this picture. This is the owner of my third Venezuelan Cuatro. Enmanuel Mundarain boyfriend of my fiend Katherine. They live in Tolosa. Back when I started the workshop venture, she contacted me to make this gift. It was only my second sale and I was going international. Needless to say I was nervous as hell. Sending an instrument that far is scary. I mean if there's a problem with it, there's no actual way I can get it back to fix it. Not without months of delay.
Fortunately, Enmanuel's mother was the one to come around and pick it up. She took it on a plane all the way to Tolosa. That's how a lot of instruments go international. Of course, it's the way for unregistered work. I have my eyes set on the workshop space and then into registration. The latter will give me the advantage of using shipping without having problems at customs. Anyways, back to the issue at hand.
Some of you might remember the whole project this one spun 7 issues. Back then, I tried to make posts with more details about all the process, but the series got too long. Now, I have come to shorter posts tying to highlight the important stages. If you'd like to remember this build, just click here. Each one of the posts has a link to go back and forth each other.
Some praise also came with the photo. I'm glad he liked the instrument. Well, not only him and my friend but the whole family. Hopefully, this little one will become something of a landmark there in Tolosa. I wouldn't have tough my first international instrument would find its place over there. But life is full of surprises.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for another photo of the second international instrument. That one is in Chile. It left the country earlier this year as a rush purchase, and a lucky one. I'll write back to see if that photo won't take as long as this.
Even though my clients haven't been professional musicians so far, I'm glad friends have taken an interest to purchase my crafts. I guess this is the exception to that rule about it being so hard that friends become customers. Let's hope more and friends and others find it interesting and make a request. I'll be more than happy to make more instruments for local clients and international ones.
For the moment, I'm preparing wood for future projects and also working on other pieces. My 7th Venezuelan Cuatro is one painting away of being ready to play. Each time one instrument nears its closing stage, I feel eager to listen to its voice. And it fills with joy when I finally put it on their owners hands. Of course all that makes for great content. All of that and more will come this way. I'm sure you will appreciate it.
Have a great day!
