Recent Research about the Voboam Family and their Guitars

Although the different members of the Voboam family were the most important makers of French guitars during the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, they remained largely obscure until the late XIXth century. For the past twenty-five years, the Voboam workshops have been studied in an effort to reconstruct the family's genealogy and to list their production (twenty-five signed instruments preserved all over the world). From them and from available archival documents we could deduce that at least four (but probably five) makers named Voboam were active. Based on an analysis of their individual styles, new attributions could be made.