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The story of Pierre Fontaine
ChrisMartin
Shellharbour NSW Australia✭✭ Di Mauro x2, Petrarca, Genovesi, Burns, Kremona Zornitsa & Paul Beuscher resonator.
So what does anyone know about the GJ guitars from Pierre Fontaine?
From what I have seen they are fine guitars, but his name is not one that most people think of for a top quality instrument.
The reason I say that is because for what little fame he does have in guitar making it is either as having worked for Busato (which can only help) but he is maybe better known as the man who made thousands of cheap guitars for beginners. As there was so little known, and my curiosity always gets the better of me I decided to translate a lengthy feature from one of the Vintage Vertigo magazines that was published a couple of years ago in France. I did this for two reasons; one, he is one of those that not much is known about in English, and two, while reading through I found he was making guitars for Pierre Bucolo.
I have asked elsewhere about P. Bucolo on here, see other post, but I thought the Fontaine story may be of interest to some too.
I have attached the PDF of the Fontaine story to this post. I started by translating it literally from the French which can make for some rather flowery prose, so I then edited it again just a little to make it easier to read, but some of the meanings, and metaphors, do not always read well in English, however I thought it better to stay close to the writer’s original copy and let the reader find their own meanings.
I hope it all makes sense.
Chris
From what I have seen they are fine guitars, but his name is not one that most people think of for a top quality instrument.
The reason I say that is because for what little fame he does have in guitar making it is either as having worked for Busato (which can only help) but he is maybe better known as the man who made thousands of cheap guitars for beginners. As there was so little known, and my curiosity always gets the better of me I decided to translate a lengthy feature from one of the Vintage Vertigo magazines that was published a couple of years ago in France. I did this for two reasons; one, he is one of those that not much is known about in English, and two, while reading through I found he was making guitars for Pierre Bucolo.
I have asked elsewhere about P. Bucolo on here, see other post, but I thought the Fontaine story may be of interest to some too.
I have attached the PDF of the Fontaine story to this post. I started by translating it literally from the French which can make for some rather flowery prose, so I then edited it again just a little to make it easier to read, but some of the meanings, and metaphors, do not always read well in English, however I thought it better to stay close to the writer’s original copy and let the reader find their own meanings.
I hope it all makes sense.
Chris
Comments
I went to Rome Instruments several times in the 90s, mostly because I had gotten some sketchy information that Rue Rome was where you could find guitars. It's actually where you can get "quartet" instruments and woodwinds, not so much guitars. Plus it was right around the corner from the "Roue Fleurie" bar owned by Serge Camps. There were always several Fontaine guitars for sale there; in my memory, those Fontaine Selmer style guitars were pretty good, though at the time I did not have a lot of experience with this kind of guitar. They were plain, the headstock was not as refined as a Favino and they were very light. He must have made a lot of these guitars, I always wondered why you almost never see one for sale.
It's just amazing how people keep finding stories like this!
Yes ok, it does say 'poule' which is goose. However, if you read my notes again you will see I explained that I did edit some of the French prose as not all the metaphors make sense to everyone. Where I grew up in the English countryside the saying was for a chicken, but if anyone prefers goose, please feel free to mentally substitute that word at the appropriate sentence. So sorry, I sincerely hope it did not spoil the story too much for Wim. There has always got to be one hasn't there.................
Well now you're confusing me ever more saying that in English countryside you'd say chicken too (because goose is oie and it would be poule for chicken). I never heard that in my life ..
Ok, if you really want to take pedantry to new horizons, I have attached a scan from the Collins French Dictionary in which it defines poule as both a noun for hen, and in the phrase 'la poule aux ouefs d'or' as 'the goose that lays the golden egg. It could mean either, most people would accept either phrase, just because you have never heard it only means you need to listen more.
Il n'est pas difficile de confondre l'un qui veut être confus.
I do wonder if all of his guitars had a Fontaine label after opening the shop in 1980. I suspect despite the quantities mentioned, 250,000 in the Legrand story, or 150,000 on the Rome Instruments website, most were, and still are, not identified as Fontaine guitars. Compared to all of the other names we are familiar with there are very few advertised. Le Bon Coin only has one Fontaine guitar listed at the moment, compared to several from Castelluccia, Di Mauro or Favino. Guitare Village has a later Fontaine GJ guitar (and like DjangoBooks, has sold a few now and then), but these were apparently made in much smaller numbers and not part of the mass-produced entry level market but in the '80s and '90s he was still making the simpler classic and folk instruments too.
As for finding stories; I can recommend the three issues of Vintage Vertigo published so far for anyone who reads French - I hope there will be further volumes. There is another story which has the most info I have yet read about Busato so far. There is a lot of info about the mysteries of the Gypsy Jazz luthiers, although not exclusively so. Try F. Charle for copies.
I also would recommend a copy of 'Luthiers et Guitares d'en France' which, published in 1996 may be hard to find now and may be expensive if you do. It covers the history of luthiery in France and features many of the new generation, some electrics and modern designs as well as stories on Castelluccia, Dupont, Favino, Jacobacci, Maccaferri and Pappalardo.
"la poule aux oeufs d'or" 104,000 hits (note spelling oeufs not ouefs)
"l'oie aux oeufs d'or" 2710 hits
"hen that laid the golden eggs" 5650 hits
"goose that laid the golden eggs" 297,000 hits
Goose wins in English by a big margin, and hen wins in French by similar margin. Silly little things like this interest me for some reason, but maybe that's only interesting to me and I shouldn't have bothered to mention it. Carry on.
I think that guitar makers like Fontaine, Gerome, and Patenotte who produced simple, good-sounding guitars of reasonable quality at a low price were once common in every country where they play guitars, and still exist in Spain and Mexico, probably in other Spanish-speaking countries, too.
Hi Chris, I can't find the attached pfd anywhere. Can you help me?