The Toronto line

Jean Larrivée's Toronto workshop of the 1970s trained a generation of builders whose names now stand on their own. Grit Laskin apprenticed there from 1971; David Wren from 1973, with his own Toronto shop by 1977 — and Wren's recollections place Laskin, Linda Manzer, Sergei de Jonge, Tony Duggan-Smith, and George Gray all at benches in the same room. Of that cohort, Wren and Manzer both now sit on the Atlas roster. Manzer, building since 1974, apprenticed under Larrivée in Toronto and later under archtop master James D'Aquisto in New York, and her long association with Pat Metheny includes the 42-string Pikasso. Sheldon Schwartz started building at fifteen in Toronto alongside Laskin and Manzer, went full-time in 1992, and now builds his Oracle and Pinnacle models in Loretto, Ontario. The line keeps paying forward: de Jonge went on to teach a lineage of his own from Chelsea, Québec — the Atlas charts it under the Québec school — and Wren credits de Jonge with his own 2009 return to the bench. Larrivée the company builds on, and its top-end work is tracked here.