At 9:01 AM +0000 03/11/23, Sandi Harris & Stephen Barber wrote: >The >rosewood was an attempt to get near to the sound that ivory produces, >using a hard material, which is of course always very beautifully-veined >and figured, as well as sounding well
I was just talking with a bagpipe player about ivory and it set me to thinking. Has anyone made any modern reproductions of lutes with ivory backs? I can't remember the context but I remember reading somewhere about ivory backed theorbos being very loud. They cull elephants in South Africa and there is an abundance of mammoth ivory, so there is legal ivory about. I suppose enough ivory for a lute back would not be cheap no matter what the source. I was wondering about the brittleness also. Lute ribs have quite a bend to them. I wonder if mammoth ivory would be too brittle. -- Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/
