The Guitar à la Sagrini 

Erik Pierre Hofmann has a wonderful article on the “Guitar à la Sagrini” available for free from his website:

https://www.fine-antique-and-classical-guitars.com/editions-des-robins-en/

There is a guitar owned by Bernard Lewis which carries a handwritten label linking it to Sagrini. There are no markings on the label or the guitar to indicate its year of construction or the maker. It is also not clear when the label might have been pasted into the guitar. An interesting piece of information came to light when Sagrini’s name was discovered in an 1826 guitar method connecting him to a particular guitar design. What was described in the method matched the design of Bernard Lewis’ guitar. No other concrete information could be found to shed light on the connection between Sagrini and this guitar design. I knew the right person to help fill in the context for a guitar built in the 1820s in Northern France of a particular design would Erik Hofmann. His initial research on this topic formed the basis of the guitar chapter in the book In Search of Sagrini.

Erik Hofmann in his article linked above goes into detail on what makes this design unique, a discussion of the associations between performing artists and instruments associated to them, technical considerations of strings and construction techniques required for a guitar of this size, and a broad survey of related designs with many beautiful photos.