Summary
Audio-visual documentation page on historical gut string manufacturing. Aquila Corde Armoniche gathers here the first known videos of several stages of the process, learned directly from the few elderly Italian stringmakers of Abruzzo and Naples in 2007–2008. The techniques shown continue the tradition described by late-18th and 19th-century sources and include the splitting horn, the hand-making of wound strings, the Italian Super Quark television feature and the encounter with Bosko & Honey.
Key takeaways
- The footage documents, for the first time on video, several stages of traditional gut string manufacturing.
- The techniques were learned directly from the last elderly stringmakers of Abruzzo and Naples (2007–2008).
- The procedures shown closely match the descriptions found in 18th- and 19th-century treatises.
- Among the filmed stages is the splitting horn, the opening of the gut with a horn tool, rarely documented elsewhere.
- The footage also shows wound strings being made entirely by hand, alongside the working of plain gut.
These are the first images in the world concerning some phases of the historical gut string manufacturing taught to us by some elderly Italian stringmakers from the Abruzzo region (central Italy) in 2008 and 2009. There is a strict connection with the historical sources of the 18th and 19th centuries.
How It’s Made: How Gut Strings are made
Bosko & Honey’s Ukulele Safari 2008
Mimmo Peruffo and Daniela Gaidano guide Bosko & Honey around their workshop, showing the process of making genuine gut strings; Mimmo also demonstrates how he makes wound strings by hand. The Nylgut strings, also made by Aquila, appear here only as the finished product (look out for what’s in the garage).
Mimmo Peruffo & Stefano Grondona (Super Quark)
The Vicenza stringmaker Mimmo Peruffo (Aquila Corde Armoniche) and Stefano Grondona discuss how and why gut strings are still produced and played today. The feature is in Italian.
Historical gut stringmaking: the splitting horn
A short demonstration of the traditional horn-splitting technique, one of the most distinctive and least documented stages of the Abruzzo process.
