Commissioned as a truly one-of-a-kind instrument, this Robbins R.1CA draws its visual inspiration from Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night. The project began with a client’s wish to create an instrument to treasure for a lifetime, combining an Italian spruce soundboard with a rare, high-grade set of African blackwood and Tyler Robbins’ distinctive resin-art inlay work. Rather than reproducing the painting directly, Robbins translated its swirling movement and luminous colors into his own modern design language. After producing a physical rosette mock-up and refining several concepts, he developed a composition combining contemporary brushstroke forms, geometric line art, and custom-colored resin. The theme flows across the rosette, soundboard, back, fingerboard, headstock, purfling, and end wedge, creating a unified artwork throughout the instrument. The R.1CA features a Florentine cutaway, multiscale fanned-fret fingerboard, African blackwood arm and rib bevels, ebony-toned Rocklite binding, and a custom split end-wedge inlay designed around the installation of a K&K Pure Mini pickup. Every visual element was developed as part of a single composition, making “Starry Night” not simply a decorated guitar, but a singular collaboration between its owner and the builder.
