Let’s start from the beginning…

It just happened to me to be happy married for over 20 years to lutherie. I’ve been part of this experience through my wife Ruth Obermayer, a Granada/Spain based luthier of german origin. It is through her talents and commitment both to learn the craft in the most profound way possible and to serve the needs of the musicians pouring into her workshop that I have been gifted with an insight into the daily bread of a professional luthier. She being a woman luthier has granted me an additional perspective to the craft which I would say is socially remarkable and relevant today. Her more recent prominent involvement in the traditional national luthier association GLAE, an european scientific research project and community and a global lutherie network of women has further opened my eyes to the craft in a wider, interconnected context.

To our friends and family I’ve been saying that the work of my wife and me is about 400 years apart. This is because since 1998 I’ve been always working at the forefront of internet technology. Always updating on the newest tech and ways for businesses to express themselves and sell digitally and online.

After having co-founded one of the first blockchain technology companies of Spain in 2019 and having been helping to build adoption projects for “early- bird” businesses we realized we were just… way too early! The conditions were not met both for the users and for businesses to deliver the benefits, especially in Europe.

But in late 2022 two real-world experiences came together:

Ruth had sold a violin and I was working on the “mandatory” paper-certificates of authenticity and value for her clients. I had taken some nice photos of the instruments but she wasn’t that happy with them because I hadn’t taken into account to highlight some remarkable instrument details. And I had also failed again to put the description of the instrument that she had send me by mail but with making references to a previous instrument of hers. And I was also late with the certificates and client was waiting. A generally frustrating collaborative effort, once again! I asked myself…

what it would take to give her the appropriate tools to deliver on their client’s need to have a certification about ownership, authenticity and even value?

Days before she had had again clients in her workshop with an instrument “not worth the money” they had payed for. A big recurrent issue and one of the reasons the luthier associations in Spain came to be. An issue usually due to a lack of information on the client side paired mostly with abuse of power and trust. Add to it an opaque market with the possibility to make good money with highly priced instruments. A general frustrating situation both for artisans and clients. Again, I asked myself…

what would it take to ensure a musical instrument market where luthiers deliver on their work based on their acknowledged experience?

A network of mutually endorsed artisans publishing their work on a technology layer build for proving and tracking ownership. This is our bet at Instruement.

My personal background and skills have been nourishing a strong sense of purpose since we started Instruement in 2023. I believe we are offering and building something valuable to a necessary craft because making music matters as it is a fundamental tool for a joyful life.

— Adrián