dismal ax

Gwendolyn Forrester got her start in lutherie when she found a “crappy” Les Paul copy in a trash heap and kept working on it until she got it to work right. Though essentially self-taught, Forrester’s father had some experience building banjos, so the budding luthier was able to pick his brain and use the shop in the family’s basement.

Forrester has a very unique building style and methodology, drawing inspiration from nature in the surrounding hills of central Tennessee. Her approach to guitar building is to keep her designs and methods as simple as possible, make use of locally harvested timber and salvaged materials, and put the emphasis on the inherent beauty of the wood. Some of the salvaged materials come from old barns, fences, and other structures with weather-worn surfaces, saw marks, and nail holes—giving her instruments their distinctive degree of organic, visual interest. Most every guitar Forrester creates makes use of recycled wood and she has plans to incorporate much more in the future. Up to now, she has only been using recycled wood for the bodies, but is working on ways to incorporate it for necks. “I’m really picky about what I use in necks, and most of the wood I find in barns is pretty funky,” explains Forrester.