Back after a year’s absence, we welcome Salvage Sounds to the small gallery for the return of another “pop-up music shop”, featuring their range of handmade instruments to suit all budgets.
Salvage Sounds are a family run “alternative luthier” based in Worthing, specialising in the creation of non-conventional stringed instruments centred around re-purposed parts and upcycled materials. Whether it be an old cigar box, empty coffee tins, the registration plate of a long-scrapped vehicle, or a wooden pencil case – the designs are often quirky and unusual, yet always are functional, playable musical art pieces in their own right… Art that creates art.
Each instrument is deliberately simplified, with less strings than their standard equivalents, so that the enjoyment of playing can be accessible to all ages and abilities. The production process is similarly stripped-down. There are no workshops or heavy-duty machinery involved in the manufacture of the instruments. Save for the use of a basic electric drill, each is made almost entirely using only remedial hand tools: saws, files, hammer and chisel… and lots of sandpaper.
Since developing this passion, Salvage Sounds find they now look on the world differently and often catch themselves scouring the edges of pavements for discarded nuts, bolts, screws and bottle-caps that might be incorporated into one of their creations, or looking in the window of every charity shop they pass for wooden boxes that may have the chance to be reborn as a ukulele.
It was in wishing to share this passion that they began Salvage Sounds. Come and browse or chat to them if you wish to ask any questions, enquire about their instruments, listen to them being played – or even to try them out for yourself.
Previous years have shown the exhibition to be very popular with displayed items selling quickly. As such it is recommended to visit early in order to reserve your own unique musical work of art.
Open Tuesday – Saturday // 10.00 – 17.00
