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Howard Mishler
OLD-FASHIONED Christmas IN THE WOODS 19 #90
Music & Craft from What’s at Hand
About 10 years ago I saw a video of a young man playing a guitar made from a homemade box with an old license plate on the front of it. I found a license plate from the year I was born, made my own 3 string accoustic/ electric guitar and then I couldn’t stop making them. Back in the day ordinary people were very poor and could not afford to buy musical instruments, so they would use whatever they could find (a cigar box, a discarded piece of wood, a piece of wire) and make their own. Some of our best known early Blues pioneers started with a homemade instrument. It is said that Ellis Mcdaniel took his stage name (Bo Diddley) from the one stringed guitar (Diddley Bow) that he initially learned to play. I like to see my instruments as a tribute to the resourcefulness of those people.
Primarily I make 3 string guitars and strumsticks (aka walking dulcimers) using many different materials (cigar boxes, tins, lunch boxes, hubcaps, etc.). I also make
Diddley Bows (a one string guitar). From similar materials. The Diddley bow is the easiest stringed instrument to learn to play, and the strumstick is basically a diddley bow expanded to 3 strings.
Long before I began making instruments I made rustic furniture starting with miniatures at a very young age. When I was a teenager, one of the local businessmen in our small town of Garrettsville asked me to make a porch swing for him to match the hickory porch furniture his grandfather had made (that piece is still on his porch 50ish years later). I’ve been making similar pieces ever since. I don’t cut any live trees to make my furniture (my wife is the lorax reincarnated). I use some standing dead trees but mostly Fallen Branches (hence the name) and many other types of repurposed materials.
This will be our first year at Old-Fashioned Christmas in the Woods. We’re looking forward to it and my wife and I hope to see you there at booth #22.
#164
Come See the
New Over-Sized Cattail Yard Art
The Sutersville Sewing Co.
Applique Artists
419 First Avenue • Sutersville, PA 15083 724-872-6117 www.sutersvillesewingco.com info@sutersvillesewingco.com