More than 160 years ago, in 1862, Antonio de Torres challenged a fundamental assumption in instrument making with his famous Papier Mâché guitar. His idea was simple but radical: with the right construction, the material of the back and sides has far less influence on the sound than the soundboard, which he considered the true heart of the instrument.

To prove it, he built a guitar with a traditional spruce top, paired with back and sides made of cardboard. The experiment worked—and that guitar is still alive and well today at the Museu de la Música de Barcelona.

On a smaller scale, I’ve explored the same concept several times in my own ukulele designs. The most notable example is my “Sacco” model, which I began building in 2019 using a wooden soundboard and a shell (rather than separate back and sides) made from a composite of jute fiber and epoxy resin.

The model was fairly successful—I built around 60 instruments over the next couple of years—but I soon became concerned about the large amount of resin required. While harmless once cured, it demands careful handling during the building process. Eventually, I decided to discontinue the model until I could find a safer alternative material for the shell.

Over the following three years, I experimented with a wide range of unusual solutions. None of them quite led to a “Eureka” moment—until I realized that the answer had been right next to my workshop all along.

My wife Sonia is a craftswoman specializing in handmade paper, and her studio is literally next door to mine. That’s when Torres’ Papier Mâché guitar came back to mind, and I began to consider cardboard—and more importantly, papier mâché—as a potential solution.

With Sonia’s technical knowledge, I started a series of wild and often unsuccessful experiments. Most of them failed, but they had one big advantage: I could work freely, without the precautions required when handling resin. Everything I was mixing was safe and manageable, and that gave me the enthusiasm to keep pushing forward.

Along the way, I met two craftsmen who proved essential to this journey. The first was Gualtiero Dall’Osto, a master mask maker from Venice, who generously shared the traditional techniques of papier mâché mask production. The second was Fabio Zontini, the leading expert in Italy on replicas of Torres’ Papier Mâché guitar.

Thanks to their knowledge and guidance, I was finally able to close the circle and successfully apply cardboard and papier mâché to my ukulele building process.

Fabio Zontini also initiated the Papier Mâché Movement, a group of luthiers dedicated to this kind of research. Our first conference took place in January at the Museo Nazionale degli Strumenti Musicali in Rome.

For that event, I presented three ukuleles.

The first two featured cardboard back and sides. One was aesthetically inspired by the original Papier Mâché guitar—naturally nicknamed “Papierino”—while the other had a finish reminiscent of a comic book, or even better, a cartoon.

The third instrument was the long-awaited (at least for me) new version of the Sacco, this time built with an extremely durable papier mâché shell.

The two cardboard ukuleles have already found their new homes. The papier mâché Sacco, on the other hand, is still in the workshop under close observation. Of the three, it’s the most unconventional in terms of construction, and I want to be absolutely sure it stands the test of time.

Once I’m confident in its reliability, I’ll finally be ready to put it into production.