From the first glance at the Tusano Trading Company’s wares, it makes immediate sense that Thomas’s humanities thesis at LTU was on “The value of craft … trying to find the place where making and thinking meet”. He came to i3 after outgrowing the woodshop on campus, and over two years, has developed a wide variety of works and a small business to encompass them.
But among all the furniture and other wooden works, it’s the guitars that really stand out as his passion. Embracing the modern CNC and laser-cutting capabilities at i3, he’s both working on new designs, and spearheading the creation of a library of open-source designs, “a drawing-back of the curtain on the mechanics of the modern guitar”.
Thomas will be doing live lutherie demos in i3’s tent during the Faire, July 27-28 2019.