By Bonita Wilborn
If you attended the recent National Cornbread Festival you could have walked right past one of the most interesting booths at the festival and not even realized it. Harp makers, Jim and Jeanne Ruthem, owners of Pathways Studio Harps in Etowah, Tennessee, had a booth where they had some of their handmade harps on display for viewing, but also had demonstrations and even a quick lesson for festival attendees who had a few moments to spend with them and a desire to try out one of their beautiful harps.
According to Jim Ruthem, there are only about 20 harp makers in the United States, so this is a rare talent that he has. Some of the better known harp makers Jim mentioned are Lyon & Healy, as well as Salvi, but Pathways Studio is the only harp makers, worldwide that give a lifetime guarantee on their harps.
Jim spent a large portion of his life as an electronics engineer, but at age 49 he “decided to quit working for someone else”. He said, “My father-in-law was a luthier (a maker of stringed instruments) who built violins. Someone came to him with a set of plans for a harp and asked ‘Can you build me one of these?’ They were looking for a harp and didn’t know where to buy one. So he said, ‘Yes, with those plans, I can build it.’ So he built them a harp from this set of plans and had no clue how to tune it. My father-in-law was a good luthier, but he was not a musician. He did play the organ some, but he never played a harp. He didn’t even play the violin although he built them. So he actually built the first harp that I was able to put my finger on.”
Jim explained that he’s been a musician since the ripe old age of 8, and plays multiple instruments, so he told his father-in-law that he felt sure he could figure out how to tune the harp. By trial and error they sat down and begin to tune this harp. “We tuned it 5-6 times a day for a couple of days until all of the stretch was out of the strings and it reached the point where it was holding the tuning pretty well. I started playing around with it and told him that I thought I could teach myself to play it. He said, ‘You’d try to play a barbed wire fence if someone would pull it tight enough.’ So I asked him if he’d build me one. He suggested that we go down in the shop and work together on it. We cut the major components out, Jeannie and I took it home, put it together, and that was the first harp we built. Dad told me if I ever built an instrument and got it to play, I’d probably catch the bug, and he was correct.”
Since building that first harp in the summer of 1994, Jim and Jeannie Ruthem have built more than 200 harps from that original 31-string Gothic model. They’ve added several other harp models such as a 36-string Gothic model, a 34-string Dreamweaver, as well as a smaller 18-string Leprechaun model, and a 26-string Celtic model, that have proven less popular than the original 31-string Gothic.
Pathways Studio is located just south of Etowah, Tennessee, half way between Knoxville and Chattanooga, on Route 411, overlooking the Smoky Mountain area. This small but friendly community is the perfect location for this little shop, which still adheres to the principles of old fashioned craftsmanship.
In 1995 Pathways Studio began building harps with various woods and finishes. According to Jim Ruthem, harps are surprisingly easy to play. Their color coded strings are just like the white keys on a piano. Harps have recently received renewed interest as therapy instruments for a variety of ailments involving the muscles, ligaments, and joints. The soothing sounds of a harp seem to have a way of relieving stress and allowing the body to heal itself.
For more information call Pathways Studio at 423-263-9780.
