Meet the Maker: Martin de Witte

by Federico Sheppard

Originally published in American Lutherie #115, 2013



My task seemed fairly routine. I was delivering guitars in a quiet residential neighborhood of The Hague in the Netherlands. The area was densely populated, mostly with homes, a small retail area, and none of the modern urban standards such as convenience stores or strip malls. It looked as if it hadn’t changed much since World War II, with unbroken rows of tidy brick houses standing two stories high, cars lining both sides of the narrow street, and bicycles chained to posts on the sidewalks. But inside one of the unassuming apartments, about 150M from a large canal, I visited the cluttered shop of Martin de Witte, which seemed like its own world. I doubted his neighbors even knew about the little one-man operation inside. The years seemed to turn back even centuries further as I admired his authentic period instruments. The quiet fifty-one year old is a man of few words, which I have paraphrased as best I could from memory. Many thanks to guitarist and guitar collector Chris Erwich for making this interview possible.