The Story Behind Pickaso

Every object is made with a purpose. Someone, somewhere, imagined it, shaped it, and made it just right for the job it was meant to do.

But every now and then, something escapes that purpose.

We do this all the time. A cookie tin becomes a box for nails and screws. A wooden chair becomes a ladder. An old sock? Give it enough time and it might end up as Mr. Potato in a kindergarten.

But somehow, we tend to stop at the familiar, accepted uses.

As kids, almost everything had another purpose. A wall was a giant canvas, and the floor could become an abstract painting made entirely out of smashed spaghetti.

Then we grow up, learn how things are supposed to be, and somehow start holding back that curious side of ourselves too.

I’ve always found something comforting in not accepting that completely.

One day, I saw Jimmy Page take a cello bow and play an electric guitar with it.

That guitar screamed in so many strange and beautiful ways. It felt like the guitar suddenly showed a whole other side of itself.

I loved it.

The next day, I went straight to the music store and bought a bow.

I tried it on my acoustic guitar, and it was pure joy.

Hearing sounds I had never heard from the guitar before brought back that same curiosity I had as a kid.

I started playing around with the bow, and pretty quickly, I knew I wanted to do something more with it.

I kept experimenting with it, trying this, trying that, and asking a lot of “what ifs?”

Then I looked at the sound hole and thought, wait a minute... there’s already a perfect little opening right there.

What if I made a tiny bow that could fit between the strings, so I could play the inner strings?

That idea got stuck in my head pretty quickly.

And then I thought, what if it had hair on both sides, so I could play two strings at once?

So I called a local bow maker and asked him if he could make me a tiny stick with horsehair on it.

And... voilà. The first prototype of the Pickaso Guitar Bow.

From there, I kept refining it. I redesigned the shape, added a pick to the handle, tested dozens of different hair lengths and widths, tried both horsehair and synthetic hair, and experimented with different rosins until I reached a point where I was happy with the result.

That process took about a year, and in late 2019, I started selling the bows.

I really didn’t know what to expect.

I remember thinking, how many people out there are actually a little crazy like me, and would want something like this?

I had asked a few people and musicians what they thought, and most of them told me they didn’t think anyone would really buy it.

Turns out, quite a few.

And that was probably the nicest surprise of all.

Luckily for me, tens of thousands of musicians around the world felt the same way.

And pretty quickly, I started to realize that, at a very basic level, a lot of us are just looking for that same pure state of curiosity and creativity that brought us so much joy as kids.

There’s something special about hearing a familiar kind of sound come from a guitar in a way you didn’t expect. A sound that carries emotion not only because of the melody, but because of the sound itself.

Little by little, the business grew, and eventually became a company.

After five years of hard work, many improvements, and three versions of the original Guitar Bow, I started to feel like I was drifting a little away from the reason I had started it all.

A couple of years ago, I remembered that when I first started thinking about the Guitar Bow, I had all kinds of other ideas too, like a spinning ring or a wheel.

So I let myself go back there again and started exploring with that same childish curiosity.

And out of all that playing around, hundreds of hours of trial and error, and countless “what if?” moments, the Pickaso Rotary Bow came to life.

Some people paint. Some make music. Some make beautiful clothes. Over time, I realized that this is what I enjoy most, following a curious idea and seeing what it can become.

For me, that’s what Pickaso is all about: the sound of curiosity.