Once a very popular instrument on the Iberian peninsula, now quite scarce. Only three original instruments survive, and there is a lot of controversy about a fourth.
I offer a both copies of the surviving instruments as own designs based on iconographic and written sources.
The Bruegel Vihuela
– tuning: g’
Outline of the ‘Dias’
After I had drawn the outline of the guitar shown in “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1559), it occurred to me that the outline was very close to the ‘Chambure’ and ‘Dias’ examples. So I decided to also make a vihuela, based on the same basic shape.
Head and rose of the vihuela.
The corpus and neck were carved from a single block of oak (the wood most used in Antwerp at the time of Bruegel). It’s very shallow, after the Jacquemart André instrument.
I simply couldn’t resist carving the ‘leaky cauldron’ head on the pegbox.
The sound isn’t loud, but its projection is huge.
Please inquire about options and your preferences,
everything you can imagine is possible!
The Dutch Luthier 