I restored an old #guitar for a change. Does anybody happen to know who the maker resident in Calle Jorge Juan, #Valencia in the first half of the 20th century may have been? (see photo of the partially obscured label in the blog entry) https://proseandpassion.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-guitar-from-valencia.html #PirateLuthier #SpanishGuitar #Luthier
@proseandpassion Hi Michel, I live in Valencia and I know Jorge Juan Street nowadays a well-known shopping street in the city centre. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any reference to a guitar factory in that area. I will continue looking and if I find any information I will contact you again.
@Pasimolete thanks for looking, that's very kind.
@proseandpassion After reviewing the photograph, I believe that it does not refer to the current Jorge Juan street in Valencia. There are other letters in front of it, but they do not make sense to me. I have searched but unfortunately I cannot find anything similar.
I also believe that I recognize under the Swiss label the end of the logo of the manufacturer, something ending in "rtea". I have not been able to find anything ending with that name either, so let's move on.
@proseandpassion I am attaching a photograph where I have superimposed what I believe I have recognized.
@Pasimolete many thanks, yes, I was wondering about the letters before the DE JORGE JUAN, as they didn't quite fit calle nor carrer. Re the name, I think underneath the name of HUG there may be the initial C. ? I just discovered that the Hug company is still in business and has a really nice history page, so I'll email them in the hope that whoever looks after their company history may be able to answer.
@proseandpassion Please keep me informed. If I find anything else I will get back to you. Best regards.
@proseandpassion Hi! Another Valencian here... Thanks to your post I did some fast research and was amazed to find out about a tradition of guitar makers in València I didn't know about!
Finally, found this: https://jedistar.com/juan-cortes-juan-cortez/
which shows some very similar labels to yours (and the last one, in fact, also includes a label from a Swiss luthier!) So it looks like your guitar was made by Jose Cortés, between 1910-1930.
@proseandpassion Regarding the address, it reads "Continuación de Jorge Juan"... "Continuación" means "continuation" or "follow up". This was probably around present day "Joaquin Costa" street: that part of the city was in development around that time, so maybe that street had no name yet ( and probably was just a path or road in the fields)
@pablo_armur @proseandpassion
Great, Pablo! I was going crazy with the term "continuation" that I couldn't see. Most likely the explanation you give is correct because of the year the guitar was made.
And where I read -rtea it was -rtes from the word Cortés. It's true, great!
@Pasimolete @proseandpassion Yes, I was confused about it as well (reading the label, I thought it could be "Callejón", but that didn't make much sense)...
Actually, reading more about Cortés (link in my other reply), it appears he later used the "Joaquin Costa" address, so I think it's clear
@pablo_armur Oh wow, many thanks, yes that's a match, very exciting! Will update the blog entry and tell the owner of the instrument who will be excited as well. cc @Pasimolete
@proseandpassion @Pasimolete Glad to help, it was interesting to look at this!
Actually, following a link from the blog post I gave, I discovered this amazing page on Valencian guitar luthiers: https://guitarrasvalencia.wordpress.com/
There you have more info about José Cortés here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B24HRm31W5FNTFhRSllhUFBYLXc/view?resourcekey=0-xj7BVEVVb1oXIMfsdTCdbw
@pablo_armur @Pasimolete thanks, so from this I see you were right about Joaquin Costa, which was named 1925, being the same place, so this makes the guitar officially 100+ years old! But I'm confused re the role of Jose Cortes - while he was based in Hamburg and trading other people's instruments, he couldn't be in Valencia making his own guitars? But maybe he did own a workshop in Valencia manufacturing in his name while doing the sales business in Paris and Hamburg
@proseandpassion @pablo_armur I'm reading in this blog there are two Cortes luthiers. It is a curious information about this guitar label.
@proseandpassion
@Pasimolete
Yes, didn't realise you could use the address to date the guitar, cool!
About the trader/maker thing, yes, I was confused too. I don't know