V E N L O N I A

The headstock of this vintage parlor guitar, that I found in a local thrift shop, was marked with an old school logo that said ‘Venlonia’. After some online research I discovered that this guitar was built in a small factory in the Dutch town of Venlo, a place just 20 km of where I grew up!
I got approached by a man who was very interested in buying it as he told me that this very guitar was built by his father! He showed me an article about his father, who was originally trained to be a model builder but started to master the craftmanship of a luthier and already built several violins and mandolins when he was 16 years old! In 1938 this man founded his own luthier company of Venlonia that made all sorts of stringed instruments, including this very guitar that he made in the 1950’s. So now, after 70 years, this piece ended up in the possession of its builders son!