Anaheim, January 2026. Among the thousands of instruments on display at the world’s most important music industry trade show, something different appeared at booth 5416. Not a new model. Not a product launch. A conversation about what a guitar mixed with Art can be.
Paoletti Guitars brought The Eye of Florence to the NAMM Show for the very first time, together with our exclusive global partner Art of Guitar, and the response from visitors, dealers, collectors and press confirmed what we had believed from the beginning: this project speaks to people who see music and art as part of the same world.
The collection, eight one-of-a-kind electric guitars each inspired by one of the stained-glass windows crowning Brunelleschi’s Dome at the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, was presented to an international audience for the first time on American soil. Each guitar is entirely conceived, designed and handcrafted by Fabrizio Paoletti, covered on every surface with nearly 6,000 hand-cut Venetian mother-of-pearl tiles, and carries within it an authentic fragment of marble from the Cathedral itself, a privilege granted by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, whose collaboration has seen the project officially recorded in the Cathedral’s historical archives alongside the names of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
The NAMM Show gave us the opportunity to stand in front of a truly global audience and present The Eye of Florence not as a concept, but as a living work in progress, guitars being built right now in our atelier in Quarrata, Tuscany, one tile at a time.
“The ambition grew. The way of working never changed,” Fabrizio said during the show. “What this project has shown me is that a guitar can leave the world of the instrument almost entirely and live as a work of art.”
Art of Guitar, the prestigious Dubai-based boutique consistently ranked among the top 100 dealers on the NAMM world list, has been the exclusive global partner for The Eye of Florence since the project’s world premiere in Dubai in May 2025. Their presence at NAMM alongside Paoletti reinforced the international dimension of the collection and opened private conversations with collectors from across the United States and beyond. All acquisition enquiries are handled privately and confidentially through Art of Guitar.
The Eye of Florence is now moving toward its defining moment: a private unveiling event in autumn 2026 in Florence, at a villa on the Tuscan hills, in the presence of the highest authorities of the Cathedral, future owners and collectors from around the world.
NAMM was the first time the world saw it. Florence will be the last time it is seen as something still becoming.
