Luis Uyaguari Quezada

On Thursday afternoon, we went out for our regular lunch and made our way to spanish class for 2PM. Upon arriving at the front door of the school, my teacher was waiting in her car and asked us to join her. Mary and I, with our teacher's drove and spoke in spanish together. I realized soon afterwards that we were headed to my teacher´s friend's guitar construction and reparation shop. We had talked about her friend briefly in class, and I had expressed a keen interest in potentially visiting his shop one day. I had not expected it to become a part of spanish class. We drove for approximately 15 minutes through old town, up onto a ridge overlooking the city, and down a few small dirt roads. We entered through a half- opened door and met Luis Uyaguari Quezada. He has been making acoustic and classical guitars for nearly 38 years and the business was passed down to him from his father. His guitars range between $300 and $3000 dollars and he mostly sells his guitars to maestros in Ecuador. It is difficult to describe how incrdeible this man's finishing work is and how passionately he describes his processes. One particular portion of the guitar that is unique to his style is his rossette-craft (decoration around the sound hole of the guitar). He spends hours and hours embedding small pieces of all different varieties of wood to create beautifully intricate circular mosaics around he opening of the guitar. I played some music for the Luis and we exchanged contact information. He has invited me back to visit him again and I have been toying with the idea of asking him to to teach me how to make a guitar. It would be a great introduction to the trade and a wonderful opportunity to work on my spanish. We were there for over 2 hours and left feeling extremely fortunate to have met Luis.