No, I was not invited to exhibit my guitars at WILS during my first year in the US. I was helping The Archtop Foundation present the most prominent collection of archtop guitars that ever existed: Scott Chinery's Blue Guitar Collection. The Archtop Foundation, represented by Ty Danco and Doug Baumoel, whom I met at the Rocky Mountain Archtop Festival, is the new custodian of these marvels. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be close to these guitars. I have been fascinated by the collection for the last 15 years. You can see photographs from the event below. I was helping the Foundation by staying at the booth and telling the story to anyone who wanted to hear it.

Here is the story.

The story

In my opinion, the greatest collection of purely acoustic archtop guitars is the Blue Archtop Collection (BAC), commissioned by Scott Chinery, starting with the Blue Centura Deluxe by the great Jimmy D'Aquisto. It was one of the last guitars Jimmy built before his passing in 1995. This particular guitar was the spark for the blue collection. Scott's wife, a painter, suggested that there were examples of painters depicting the same subject and composers composing variations on the same theme. They discussed what luthiers could do with a similar challenge, and that is how the BAC started. Scott initially contacted 14 accomplished luthiers and commissioned one archtop from each. Later, he expanded the list, bringing the final collection to 22 guitars, including the Blue Centura Deluxe.

The requirements for the luthiers were:

1. Make the best purely acoustic archtop you can.
2. The lower bout should be 18 inches.
3. The neck width at the nut should be 1.875 (1 and 7/8) inches—Scott was a BIG man!
4. The guitar must be finished with the same blue dye that Jimmy used for the Blue Centura Deluxe: Ultra Blue Penetrating Stain #M 520 from Mohawk Finishing in Amsterdam, New York.

The participating luthiers created masterpieces. Scott made the collection available to a limited number of players and luthiers. The blue guitars were also displayed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History from the fall of 1997 through the fall of 1998. After Scott Chinery's passing in 2000, the collection was no longer available to the public. Last year, the BAC was offered for sale. The collection has been acquired by The Archtop Foundation, which was set up for this purpose. The foundation aims to make the collection available to players, luthiers, researchers, and the public. The collection was shown at the 2022 Rocky Mountain Archtop Festival in Arvada this September and at the Woodstock Invitational Luthiers Showcase.

Many guitars in the Blue Collection were built by my luthier idols. I have enormous respect for Scott Chinery, for conceiving and funding The Blue Guitar Collection, and for the luthiers involved in the project. I am also immensely grateful to The Archtop Foundation for preserving the collection as a whole. Making the Blue Collection available to great players and allowing research on these masterpieces is an enormous service to society.

There are many videos on The Archtop Foundation YouTube channel featuring these guitars played by superb musicians. It is difficult to choose just one to post here, but Jimmy's Blue Centura Deluxe is definitely a benchmark. So here it is: