In a workshop in the back garden of a quiet residential street, one of the world’s leading makers of guitars and ukuleles is building a business and a global reputation. DAVID MORGAN went along to meet him
Foxed: Daniel Lukes’ instruments all carry a trademark carving, keeping him in touch with nature
Daniel Lukes’ careful craftmanship takes time. Lukes makes stringed instruments – bespoke, made-to-order acoustic guitars and ukuleles. He is a luthier.
The finished instruments have a fine tone, their glistening wooden forms are a piece of art in their own right. When I visit Lukes’ small workshop behind his house in South Croydon, he was completing an order for an Australian customer. In the four years since he started his special, specialised business, he has built up a client list from all around the world.
But don’t expect any next-day delivery. If you ordered an instrument from him tomorrow, the whole process of designing, creating and producing it would take a minimum of seven months. At the end of it, what you would get is an instrument handmade to your specifications and sounding just the way you want it.
Lukes’ meticulous approach to each order means that he completes no more than 10 instruments each year. Not only do they have to sound superb, they must look stunning too.
A luthier’s world can be somewhat isolating. Lukes is one of only a few working in the whole of the Greater London area.
Handmade: Daniel Lukes’ workshop, hand-built in his South Croydon garden, like the finely crafted instruments he now makes inside it
Each day is spent in solitude in his workshop, slowly, carefully progressing his orders, while he listens to Radio 3 or history podcasts.
He is grateful to be able to link up online with other young, talented luthiers, like Rosie Heydenrych in East Sussex, and Oliver Merchant, in Farnham. They are a part of a new group of young instrument makers, happy to share ideas and techniques. They might all get to meet up in person one day, at a specialists’ show in Harrogate, but that won’t be for some months yet, in spring next year.
Luthier Lukes’ neat workshop, built by himself and topped with a living roof, says much about him as a person. Keenly aware of natural habitats and the need to look after them, Lukes is pleased that his living roof provides the same growing area as the ground area did before he built his work place.
Each area is meticulously arranged. There are hand tools of all types, specialist machines, and now Lukes has installed a dust extractor fan, so that his lungs do not get clogged with the dust created by working with wood.
His knowledge and understanding of different types of wood is developing as he becomes more experienced. In the workshop there are many timbers of varied shapes and sizes from a whole range of trees. He likes to use local British wood wherever possible.
For a part of one of his current projects, he is using Fenland Bog Oak. Darkened after falling into a Cambridgeshire fen several thousand years ago, the acidic nature of the wetland has preserved the tannins in the wood and created a deep, attractive colour.
Luthier at work: each instrument Daniel Lukes makes can take up to seven months to craft and complete
In different sections of his store, there are planks of laburnum, walnut, European spruce and sycamore and English Yew. Lukes understands the versatility of yew; centuries ago, it was used to create the long bows which English archers used to such good effect in medieval battles such as Crechy and Agincourt. Seven hundred years later, yew in Lukes’ hands is transformed into the body of a guitar.
The love of his work was perfectly summed up in the way he talked about “coaxing” wood into a curved shape, using a bending iron, spraying the wood with water and gently pressing it into the required profile.
The glueing area of his workshop is fascinating. Different types and strengths of glue are used in conjunction with clamps and a go-bar. Lukes uses the go-bar to build the sound boards.
Everything in the construction process is about precision, especially the glueing. There can be no leakage of glue inside or out. The sound quality would be compromised if any dried glue remained inside the soundboard.
Every one one of luthier Lukes’ instruments can be identified by his signature mark.
The neck of each instrument is carved into a fox’s head, another nod to the wildlife found in his garden. Further links to the natural world can be seen throughout his work.
A tenor ukulele he has made is called a “kingfisher”, because of his use of cyan and blue in the stabilised burls. These are small blocks of wood treated with dyes and resins and put into a vacuum chamber to create the colourisation. Lukes has to slice these into wafer thin sections, less than two milimetres thick, ready to personalise the fretboard.
Daniel Lukes has been around South Croydon most of his life, having gone to Trinity School. He made his first instrument in the workshops there. It was, however, a course on musical instrument making and repair which he attended in 2016 at Merton College, part of the South Thames Colleges Group, which set him on his current course.
There can be no rushing the luthier Lukes process of making a guitar or ukulele. A recent scratch which happened during the lacquering process set his schedule back by a month.
But he is moving on, learning with every turn of the lathe, every stroke of his plane, proud to be part of a new generation of craftsmen and women, creating something that is special and lasting in this throwaway society.
Lukes likes to play his guitars, too. He can often be found on Tuesdays at the open mic night at The Oval Tavern. Croydon, long home to world-class musicians, is now making world-class musical instruments, thanks to Lukes the luthier.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T
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Daniel made me a wonderful guitar a few years ago and I can certainly confirm the care and attention he puts into his craft, so it’s great to see his art recognised in this article. He’s also one of the nicest people you’re ever likely to meet.
This is a stonkingly brilliant piece! I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed and relished it. Two questions – one, can we have an idea how much one of these works of art cost, and two, what kind of music does Daniel like? Yes, I know that Radio 3 gives a clue, but IC’s loyal readers need to know. And thirdly, can we please have more of Morgan’s Mutterings – they are the jewel in IC’s starry crown. Or is there a budgetary reason why why not? PS: I’m told ‘ukelele’ is pronounced, ooh-kay-lay-lay
Thankyou for such a good article on something positive going on in the midst of our hometown. It is good to celebrate local artists and artisans that bring something good to a town that gets way too much negative press much of the time.
Daniel is a dedicated and talented individual who is on the pathway of carving out his niche and bringing unique values to what he does.
Nice to mention the guitar making courses at Merton College too , which is effectively only over on the outskirts of our town. I have employed several graduates from there myself for my own guitar making and repair business here in Croydon over the last couple of decades. It remains one of the few colleges in UK offering this kind of course.
We have some clever people here in Croydon and getting to hear about them is fab because it helps elevate how we all might view our hometown, rather than just the all the grim headlines we see too much of.