If you’re the kind of guitarist who enjoys eye candy and more, take note: A new coffee table book featuring stunning photos has arrived just in time for the holidays.
Playable Art: A Life with Guitars by author Errol Antzis explores the instruments, people and experiences that have shaped his musical life. And it contains stories that will be highly relatable for just about anyone who has a lifelong love of the guitar.
Ask a guitarist about a favorite instrument, and the answer often goes well beyond pickups, tonewoods, and neck profiles. There’s the first guitar, the one that got away, the unlikely find—and the one that will never be sold. For musician and collector Errol Antzis, those stories span more than 50 years.
Drawing on a collection of approximately 230 instruments, Antzis brings a player’s perspective and a collector’s curiosity to guitars that caught his attention for the way they look, feel, and play. His interests range from familiar makers to adventurous designs and instruments overlooked by the wider market.
Photographer Michelle Blum gives the collection an equally personal visual treatment. Working with Antzis’s home, grounds, artwork, and furnishings, as well as nearby locations, she places guitars within landscapes and interiors that invite readers to consider their shapes, materials, and character. The photographs bring humor and a sense of discovery to instruments ordinarily seen on a stand or against a plain backdrop.
“What makes this collection unusual is not the presence of celebrity guitars or textbook vintage classics,” Antzis writes in the book’s Introduction. “These are instruments that spoke to me.”
The journey began at age 14 with a used Hagstrom III purchased from an older neighbor for $30. Antzis stripped and refinished it himself. A Les Paul Custom followed, with his parents’ support, and remains in his collection today.
The book follows those connections through individual instruments. Stories include an aluminum Jackson Roswell Rhoads that sharpened Antzis’s appreciation of guitars as art, instruments he created with his daughter, and a signed Yamaha tied to a visit with Michael Jackson’s family. Contributions from Grammy-winning musicians and well-known luthiers add perspectives from the people who play and build the instruments.
Antzis also shares the less orderly side of collecting: changing tastes, purchases reconsidered, guitars sold and later missed. In one account, he decides that 250 guitars are too many and consigns 50 for sale—reasoning that he “only” needs 200.
The guitars have a sound beyond the page too. Readers are directed to Antzis’s Psychoteria recordings to hear music made with instruments that appear in the book. He continues to play, write, and record, maintaining the connection between collecting guitars and making music with them.
“But collecting isn’t just about acquiring objects,” Antzis writes. “At its best, it’s about connections: with history, with beauty, and with kindred spirits.”
For guitarists who remember their first instrument, still search for an elusive model or regret letting a favorite go, Playable Art offers a fellow enthusiast’s account of the pursuit—and the pleasure of living with the guitars that make it worthwhile. And those who are not players will also be fascinated by the photos, the stories, and the passion that are evidenced in the book.
Errol Antzis’ book Playable Art: A Life with Guitars is available for $95 plus shipping. For more information, visit https://errolantzis.com/playable-art-guitar-book/
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