Alberto De Gattis

Where it truly comes from, we will never know. Some traditions carry its roots beyond the Alps, as far as Brittany; other trails stop at Viterbo. Then the road turns south, into Calabria, as far as Martirano, where a branch of the family is said to have arrived in the fifteenth century.

Centuries went by. The name stayed.

Much later it reached my grandfather. He was a carpenter: he knew wood, its grain, its character. Then music came into his life and his road changed. The carpenter became an orchestra conductor.

I was born in Cosenza and I build in Rende, a few kilometres further on. I was born into music: a musician, then a composer, I spent years chasing sound, until I began to ask what came before it. Before the note. Before the vibration. The answer took me back to where my grandfather had started. To wood.

That is how I became a luthier, and how De Gattis Guitars began. Not simply to build guitars, but to look for the point where matter meets sound.

Those years are worth more at the bench than anything else: I choose a board by hearing what it will do, not by counting how many I have chosen before. Every piece of wood is different, every grain happens once, every instrument is born a single time.

That is why a De Gattis is not only a guitar: it carries the memory of a family, the craft of Italian workshops and the search of a musician.

The journey may have started a long way from here. We may never know every stage of it. But we know where it goes on.