Letter: Remembering Robert Lundberg

by Bryan Johanson

Originally published in American Lutherie #69, 2002



Hello GAL,

The first person to catch my eye as I entered the hall was a large, bear-shaped man with several sets of spruce tops securely tucked under his arm. He almost knocked me down. He had spotted an exhibitor’s table of exotic hardwood and was making a beeline for it. For a large man he was moving incredibly fast, and I literally had to jump back to avoid being run down. A woman in her midforties, quickly following in the man’s wake, lightly touched my arm and said “I am so sorry. Please forgive my husband. He gets a little crazed when he is around this much wood.” With that she moved on, and I had arrived at the 2001 GAL National Convention.

Instrument makers normally work alone. There are no built-in mechanisms to bring them into the public eye. Conceivably, a luthier could take an order for an instrument, build it, and ship it off without saying a word to anyone. The luthier’s product is something like a ventriloquist’s dummy: someone else has to provide the voice and animation to their creations.