Wood anatomy of historic French violin bows made of Pernambuco wood

Autor: Haroldo Cavalcante de Lima, Claudia Franca Barros, Tahysa Mota Macedo, Cecília Gonçalves Costa
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: IAWA Journal. 41:320-332
ISSN: 2294-1932
0928-1541
DOI: 10.1163/22941932-bja10011
Popis: Paubrasilia echinata is recognized as the best wood in the manufacture of high-quality bows for string instruments. The wood anatomy of five historic French violin bows of the 19th and 20th century made of Pernambuco wood were investigated in order to reveal the wood anatomic features of these historical bows, to determine which P. echinata morphotype (arruda, café or laranja) was used in their manufacture and to identify the state of origin of the wood. Five bow samples were compared to 33 P. echinata specimens from the Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte. The wood anatomical features were compared by means of principal component analysis, which revealed the type of axial parenchyma and percentage of tissue to be the most important to sort specimens. The best wood anatomical features previously described for high-quality bows were corroborated here and the bows in general showed similar wood anatomical features. Based on wood anatomy we found that the violin bows were most similar to the samples from the arruda morphotype derived from the States of Paraíba and Rio Grande do Norte by presenting scanty, unilateral and vasicentric axial parenchyma without confluences forming bands, higher percentage of fibres and lower percentage of axial parenchyma. We can therefore suggest that the historical French violin bows studied here were all made of the arruda morphotype from the Brazilian Northeast region helping explain the preference of the French explorers for this region.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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