Many woods were used for bow making in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, including Brazilwood/ pernambuco, snakewood/amourette, spindlewood, tung wood, coral wood, ironwood, plum wood, beech wood, ebony, bois d’abeille (also known as bulletwood or massaranduba, though recent usage sometimes translates , bois d’abeille as Brazilwood which would more usually be bois de Brésil) and other species, generally under the catch-all title, tropical hardwood. A number of these tropical hardwoods were not identified as separate species until the nineteenth or even the twentieth century, so seventeenth and eighteenth century descriptions can be misleading.
For some wood varieties we have contemporary sources. James Talbot, who was writing c.1692-5, describes ‘fine Speckled-wood’ as a wood used by bowmakers.1
Speckledwood has many other names including snakewood, tortoiseshellwood, letterwood, leopardwood, amourette (usually for sapwood or unfigured pieces of heartwood), and more formally, piratinera guianensis syn. brosimum guianensis. It is perhaps not always identified as snakewood due to the changes in its appearance over time.
In 1988 Adam Bowett wrote about snakewood in the journal Furniture History and noted that, ‘The fact that it is not more widely recognised is due partly to the figure and colour having faded, making visual identification of the wood uncertain.’2 Another source suggests it darkens with age, but both indicate that the figure becomes less distinct: ‘Color tends to darken and homogenize with age and exposure.’3
The English had taken control of Surinam in the mid-seventeenth century and snakewood was an important trading commodity. George Warren, describing Surinam in 1667, provides information on its location and availability: ‘Speckle-wood is also plentiful enough, and has been sold in England equal to the price of Sugar, but by its too great and frequent Importation, it is now become of less value.’4
‘John Thornton’s map of Surinam in 1683 shows a large tract of country some 60 miles from the sea, between the upper Surinam and Willoughby rivers, which he designates ‘Speckle-wood country’.’5
In the seventeenth century the English were in dispute with the Dutch over control of the area. Following Anglo-Dutch hostilities the Treaty of Breda was signed, the Dutch retained Surinam but surrendered New Amsterdam to the English, who renamed it New York. Article 7 of the Capitulation of 6 March 1667 conceded the right of the English to continue to cut letterwood, however, most English settlers had left by 1675.
‘Since the Navigation Laws excluded Dutch colonial goods from English markets, the produce of Surinam, including snakewood all but disappeared from the scene for over a hundred years. Between 1700 and 1780 only four small importations of speckled wood, totalling 5 ¼ tons, are entered in the Customs returns.’ 6
Bowett tells us its use in furniture was limited to a very short period, ‘As the V&A analysis has shown, snakewood was employed by English furniture makers during the third quarter of the seventeenth century and rarely thereafter.’ 7
It seems likely that its use in bow making occupied a similar period. Though some speckledwood would have been available, the quantities seen in the c.1650-1675 period probably did not appear again until the British retook Surinam from the Dutch in 1795. The account of William Dampier shows that speckledwood may have been available from Brazil through the busy port of Bahia, whether the Navigation Laws would have permitted its legal entry into England is another matter.
‘Here are Dye-woods as Fustic, &c. with Woods for other uses, as speckled Wood, Brazil &c.’ 8
A little later in his account of the country around Bahia he comments, ‘Of the several kinds of Trees that are here, I shall give an account of some … speckled Wood, Fustick …’9
The diminishing use of snakewood for bows in England through the 1700s may not be due to a belief that Brazilwood/pernambuco was a better wood for bows, but simply from the gradual reduction in its availability. Bow makers would have had some stocks but as these were used new supplies would have been difficult to source.
An interesting bow in the Carel van Leeuwen Boomkamp Collection suggests not only that snakewood was difficult to obtain in England by the mid-1700s, but also that it was seen as a superior wood to pernambuco, as an attempt was made to simulate it.
‘Viol bow England c.1750. Stick of Pernambuco, partly covered with black spots as an imitation of snake wood.’10
The sale of Brazilwood and ‘farnambuck’ [pernambuco] was an already well-established trade by the late seventeenth century as is shown in the 1660 Rate Book which gave rateable values for imported goods.11 It appears many bow makers chose snakewood in preference to Brazilwood/pernambuco at this time.
Cutting Brazilwood: from André Thevet, Les singularitez de la France Antartique, Paris, 1557, leaf 177.
‘Brazilwood … was imported throughout the seventeenth century from Portugal and the Azores and by the 1660s … became the near monopoly of Fernando Mendes da Costa and his son Alvaro da Costa.’13
Brazilwood came to the da Costas via Terceira and Portugal. ‘Apart from one or two trifling exceptions, all brazilwood imports into London in the ’sixties [1660s] and ‘seventies found their way to Fernando Mendes da Costa and subsequently to Alvaro da Costa. In 1666-69 they were averaging 77 tons annually and ten years later the yearly cargoes to Alvaro amounted to over 80 tons.’14
‘As is evidenced by the Patent granted to Sir William Davidson in 1661-1662 and published by Wilfred Samuel (Trans JHSE Vol XIV p.46), the entire brazilwood output of Brazil appears to have been the monopoly of the King of Portugal. It would therefore follow that the da Costas, as sole importers, must have had a contract with the Portugese King.’15
It is apparent that exotic woods in general were freely available in the first half of the eighteenth century.
‘After 1722 we know from the Customs Records that there was a massive rise in the amount of exotic timber coming into the country, yet there continues to be not one single reference to such timber in timber merchants’ inventories. This suggests that timber merchants avoided stockpiling exotic timber in their yards and tried to sell it as quickly as possible. This quick selling may have resulted from the demand for such timber, but equally it could have been due to its particularly high value … By the mid-1740s candlelight auctions devoted to timber were becoming a common method of disposing of woods wholesale. By 1749 this arrangement had become so common as to be organised by brokers for the timber importer.’12
By 1823 Brazilwood seems to have become scarce and expensive, probably more to do with its use as a dye wood than from its use by bowmakers.
‘Brazil wood is imported from the Brazils. It is the property of the crown and every piece has the king’s stamp on it. It has been very scarce in Europe of late years being sold there at seventy dollars per hundred in the log. It is used principally for colouring crimson and other colours of that hue. It is also the principal ingredient for making red ink.’16
A seventeenth century English source, John Evelyn’s, Sylva: Or a Discourse of Forest Trees, mentions the use of spindle wood for viol bows: ‘There is a shrub called the spindle-tree, (euonymus, or futanum) commonly growing in our hedges which bears a very hard wood, of which they sometimes made bows for viols.’17
As a local and freely available wood, this would have been a cheap and simple option for English makers; however, judging by the dearth of such bows, it does not seem to have ever been in widespread use, though the small number of extant period bows makes any judgement contingent.
Diderot’s epic publishing venture, his Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers discusses the bow and its construction under the entry, ‘Violon’. It tells us the wood for the bow is, ‘ordinairement du bois de la Chine, quoique tout autre qui a la force nécessaire soit ègalement propre à cet usage’ [usually China wood, though any other that has the necessary strength is equally suitable for this purpose]. 18
From this evidence /Brazilwood was still not the primary bow wood in France in 1765, but a modern source of information on wood suggests its characteristics and workability may have played a role in its almost complete ascendency in France by the early nineteenth century.
Snakewood, ‘is extremely dense, and has a pronounced blunting effect on cutters. Snakewood also tends to be quite brittle and can splinter easily while being worked … commonly sold in full and half log forms, which typically include significant pith checking and areas of both figured and non-figured wood, which can result in high wastage.
‘Brazilwood is reported to have good workability, responding well to machining and shaping operations.’19
Other woods continued to be used in England in the early nineteenth century but eventually pernambuco/Brazil wood achieved a similar domination to the one it had in France and by the end of the second quarter of the century English bows in any other material are rare.
In contrast to the English trading position the French may have had less variety of wood available. The Anglo-French war of 1778-83 followed by France’s bankruptcy and subsequent revolution caused trade to plummet.
There is an apocryphal story of Tourte taking wood from sugar chests to make bows. Wood from these chests was certainly reused by carpenters and cabinet-makers in Portugal and, no doubt in France, but it appears the wood generally employed for these chests was Couratari.
Bernal, Valente, and Pissarra have investigated the use and reuse of these chests: ‘According to a document from 1711, there was a special trade of chests in the Brazilian “engenhos” (factories that squeezed cane into sugar). Those chests were built with 86 nails each and were waterproofed with clay and banana peels. Each chest carried between 500 and 550 kg, and some 37,020 chests were assembled annually. Approximately 98% of the sugar was sent to Lisbon. The sugar would then be sent from Portugal to other European kingdoms. The wood chest had to display on the surface several ink or fire stamps, which identified the weight, the producer and the client. Couratari’s impermeability to salty water due to the presence of silica bodies and storage of extractives made it an ideal wood to carry precious merchandise.’20
Whatever the reasons – mercantile, practical, or aesthetic – during the second half of the eighteenth century pernambuco increasingly claimed an unrivalled position as the wood par excellence for bows.
1. James Talbot’s Manuscript. (Christ Church Library Music MS 1187).
Robert Donington, ‘II. Bowed Strings’, The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 3 (March 1950), pp. 27-45.
Other sources are Pierre Trichet (c.1630-36), who says bows of Brazilwood, ebony or other solid
wood are best and Hartwig-Sprengel, who in his Handwerke und Künste (1767-1773) gives
pernambuco, redwood [Brazilwood], snakewood and plumwood as suitable materials.
Trichet, Pierre, Traité des instruments de musique. Published with an introduction and notes by
François Lesure, 1957. [Pierre Trichet, c.1630-36]
Hartwig-Sprengel, Handwerke und Künste (1767-1773).
2. Adam Bowett, ‘The Age of Snakewood’, Furniture History, Vol. 34 (1998), 212-225, The Furniture
History Society https://www.jstor.org/stable/23408137, p.219.
3. https://www.wood-database.com/snakewood.
4. George Warren, An Impartial Description of Surinam (London, 1667) p.17, in Bowett, p.217.
5. Bowett, p.217.
6. Bowett, p.219.
7. Bowett, p.214. (Bowett is citing information in, Josephine Darrah , ‘Furniture Timbers’ in, Conservation Journal, Victoria and Albert Museum, July 1992, pp.4-6, p.4.)
8. Dampier, William, A voyage to New Holland, etc., in the year 1699, New York, 1703, p.55.
9. Dampier, p.63.
10. The Carel van Leeuwen Boomkamp Collection of musical instruments, 1971, p.63.
11. ‘Charles II, 1660: A Subsidy granted to the King of Tonnage and Poundage and other summes of Money payable upon Merchandize Exported and Imported’, in, Statutes of the Realm: Volume 5, 1628-80, ed. John Raithby (s.l, 1819), pp. 181-205. British History Online, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/statutes-realm/vol5/pp181-205.
12. John M. Cross, ‘The Changing Role of the Timber Merchant in Early Eighteenth Century London’, Furniture History, Vol. 30 (1994), 57-64, The Furniture History Society https://www.jstor.org/stable/23408137, p.61.
13. Maurice Woolf, ‘Foreign Trade of London Jews in the Seventeenth Century’, Transactions & Miscellanies (Jewish Historical Society of England), Vol. 24 (1970-1973), 38-58, Jewish Historical Society of England https://www.jstor.org/stable/29778801, p.38.
14. Woolf, p.50.
15. Woolf, p.50.
16. Partridge, William, A practical treatise on dying of woollen, cotton, and skein silk, the manufacturing of broadcloth and cassimere: also a correct description of sulphuring woollens, and chemical bleaching of cottons, New York, 1823,p.142-3.
17. Facsimile of fourth edition, London, 2001, V.1, p.198. [See, Michael Fleming, ‘John Evelyn on Musical Instrument Wood’, The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 66 (March 2013), 201-210, Galpin Society.]
18. Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, eds. Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, vol. 17, Paris, 1765, p.319. China wood is also known as tung wood.
19. https://www.wood-database.com/snakewood, https://www.wood-database.com/brazilwood.
20. Bernal, R.A., Adelina Valente and José Pissarra, ‘Eighteenth Century Technological Efficiency: The Reuse of Brazilian Sugar Chest Wood in Portuguese Cabinet Manufacture’, International Journal of Conservation Science, Vol. 2, Issue 4, Oct.-Dec.: pp.217-228.[Dalbergia nigra, and Acacia sp were also identified as Brazilian woods in Portugese furniture production in this study. The authors also note that Allantoma and Cariniana are very similar to Couratari.]
©John Basford 2020