God Instructed Him in a Dream to Make Guitars and Give Them Away to Kids, So He Did

Jan 24, 201610:15 AM

Left: Ed Stilley in his shop near Huntsville, Arkansas, holding the magnificent Butterfly Guitar. Right: Stilley solved his problems with the materials he had on hand. Here is his unique attempt at a 12-string guitar.
Copyright Tim Hawley

When Ed Stilley, 85, started making stringed instruments more than three decades ago, he had no idea what he was doing. He’d had no instruction and barely any materials with which to construct them besides some scrap wood from the sawmill where he worked.

But Stilley was on a mission and wouldn’t be stopped. A deeply religious man, he’d gotten the idea during a dream. The way he tells it, God instructed him to start making guitars and to give them away free of charge to kids.

Left: Stilley would not sign his name to his creations, but on almost every instrument he used a router to freehand the words *True Faith, True Light, Have Faith in God.* Right: This teardrop-shaped guitar was purchased at a flea market and weighs almost 10 pounds. The soundbox is filled with screen-door springs, a circular saw blade, and a pink pot lid.
Copyright Tim Hawley

Glass marbles adorn the sound hole of this guitar where you can also see a curious pipe-and-spring configuration.
Copyright Tim Hawley

For the next 25 years, Stilley made guitars of every size and shape, as well as dulcimers, violins, and other stringed instruments, from his home in Arkansas. He learned to soften the wood so he could bend it and figured out that a guitar’s neck needs a metal rod through it so it doesn’t break. He collected saw blades, springs, and other cast-off items and incorporated them into his designs. The finished results, as photographed by Tim Hawley in Gifted: The Instruments of Ed Stilley, which was published in December by Press Syndication Group, are as spectacular as they are unusual.

“They sound like they look,” Hawley said.

Hawley heard about Stilley through a story on a local TV news station after moving to Springfield, Missouri, in 2010 from Los Angeles. The pair became fast friends in 2011, and Hawley soon started searching far and wide for the craftsman’s creations. By reaching out to friends and putting ads in a local paper, he was ultimately able to track down 40 of them. In addition to photographing the guitars with their owners on location, he also shot the instruments in a makeshift studio. Against a neutral background, the images highlight each guitar’s idiosyncrasies.

“Some people treasure these items and are very proud of them. Others pulled them out of barns, covered in dust and dirt. I thought that was part of the whole story. Rather than clean them up, I wanted to let that be,” Hawley said.

Stilley made this fiddle for his wife, Eliza. She says, “My violin was the cutest, I thought.”
Copyright Tim Hawley

Barn, chicken coop, and workshop at the Hogscald Hollow homestead. The buildings were all built by Stilley.
Copyright Tim Hawley

Stilley’s work bench is flooded with lovely natural light. Many works-in-progress remain unfinished.
Copyright Tim Hawley

Due to health issues, Stilley hasn’t made new instruments since 2005. But Hawley was desperate to have one, and after several people turned down his offer to buy one from them, Stilley finally gave him a guitar.

“His guitar, I swear, would rather play gospel music more than any other. It doesn’t want to play jazz. I play a gospel tune and it comes to life. Maybe there’s something in there.”