The 2004-2005 season is going to be action packed, so it would be my honor if you joined me. The season begins with appearances at the Grand Canyon and continues with trips to southern Africa, Alaska, Korea, and the southern US. It’s a great season to kick off a travel log, and I hope it proves as interesting to you as it will for me.

Yet, as interesting as it is to travel, sometimes the most fascinating things are at your own doorstep. After all, if you can’t appreciate home base how can you appreciate other people’s home base? That’s why I decided that, in order to really kick-off a great travel log, I would find a subject I admire to write about in my new-found hometown of Phoenix, Arizona.

There are a lot of reasons to call Phoenix home - great weather, beautiful scenery, lower cost of living, the third largest airport in the US, and the Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving. Very few people, however, note the cultural and artistic activities this area has to offer. There is a fine symphony orchestra and nice recital/chamber music venues, but did you know that the world’s largest importer of bows is in Tempe? I didn’t know either until I moved here and found out about it. Let me tell you about what I’ve learned from Arcos Brasil.

Bows are made out of pernambuco, and pernambuco is an endangered wood. Now, I just thought pernambuco was endangered because there were too many string players and cabinet makers in the world. The truth of the matter is that ‘pau-brasil’ (furnace-red wood in Portuguese) was a major part of the dye-trade from the mid-16th to mid-19th centuries. Before the invention of aniline dyes ‘pau-brasil’ was so important in this former Portuguese colony that Brazil was named after the wood, not vice-versa. Massive amounts of the wood were needed to produce the dye so many trees were felled without forethought or ecological considerations.

Nowadays the biggest threats to pernambuco are products of industrial development: highways, farming conglomerates clearing land, and steel mills.

Archetiers take a backseat to these influences, yet they are taking a front seat in trying to conserve the fine wood and their fine craft. Arcos Brasil is an integral part of this conservation process. Floriano Schaeffer (internationally recognized as one of the foremost experts of pernambuco wood) runs Arcos Brasil with Celso de Mello and Vito Vissicaro. Mr. Schaeffer works to salvage and use nonliving sources of pernambuco like dead logs on the forest floor. Both Mr. Schaeffer and Mr. de Mello were employed by the late Horst John, a wood dealer and bow maker internationally recognized for his pernambuco reforestation efforts. Arcos Brasil maintains that responsibility to the conservation of pernambuco wood as a given.

It’s intriguing to read about pernambuco and realize that only a lucky few have great understanding of it from the soil up. The bow makers at Arcos Brasil have a golden opportunity most bow makers don’t have: they get to use hand-selected wood with zero ecological guilt and, since Arcos Brasil is the largest manufacturer of handmade bows in the world, they get to make a lot of them. In addition to this unparalleled experience, these talented archetiers are trained in the French tradition as opposed to Horst John’s German style bow-making. The bows they produce are some of the finest being made today, and they are imported into Tempe, Arizona before being distributed to dealers worldwide.

There’s a lot going on in the Phoenix area, and to realize that this is one of the global bow centers is amazing. It’s a privilege to speak about bows and the bow-making experience with archetier and Arcos Brasil co-owners Vito Vissicaro and Celso de Mello. The give and take between musicians, bow-makers, and the forest is long from over, as I discovered by looking a little more deeply at home base.

-Thula

Coming soon: The Grand Canyon, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

Additional information:
Russ Rymer, “Saving the Music Tree,” Smithsonian, Apr. 2004 (35:1): 52-63.
Cynthia Graber, “Viva Brasil!,” Strings, May 2004: 64-69.
Website for Arcos Brasil: www.arcosbrasil.com
Coming soon: The Grand Canyon, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.