BOZO

Bozo Podunavac (born 1928) learned to build fretted instruments in the late

19405 in what was then Yugoslavia. in 1959 he moved to the United States and found &

job in Chicago repairing instruments. ln 1964 he started making guitars, at first based on . the dreadnought body shape, under the name Bozo. In 1968 he developed an unusual w _ variation, the “Bell Western," with a large lower bout and a smaller, squarer upper bout. & Podunavac offered the guitar in sixand twelve-string versions, usually heavily ornamented. He “xi also produced arch-tops and requinto guitars, which combined a three-quarter size body with a tuli-scale neck. Podunavac stopped building guitars in the early 19805 due to illness, but began agai in the mid 19905. in 1996 he was one of twenty-one luthiers commissioned to build a blue arch to for collector Scott Chinery. He still builds a small number of instruments, mainly twelve-strings, at h home in East Englewood, Florida.