Brazilian rosewood seemed finally to be unavailable outside of Brazil, but a mix of legal exceptions such as lumber supposedly accumulated before the 1992 CITES Appendix I listing (“pre-CITES” wood) and wood salvaged from non-living sources (“stump wood,” purportedly actually taproot wood) helped to continue the post-CITES international traffic in Brazilian rosewood. Thus, despite CITES Appendix I protection, hundreds to thousands of board feet of slab-sawn (wood cut sequentially in lengthwise slabs through the entire log with little regard for grain) and some quarter-sawn Brazilian rosewood appeared in the international market in the 1990s and 2000s, much of which was imported into the US. Many exporters claimed that this wood was sourced from long-dead tree stumps. Luthiers can use slab-sawn wood successfully for guitar backs and sides but the visual effect differs substantially from quarter-sawn wood of the same species–slab-sawn Brazilian rosewood typically has little vertical grain but it does generally have figure, such as ”cathedral grain,” which some players prefer (Photo 5). “Classical” quarter-sawn Brazilian rosewood with its reddish-brown and orange hues, contrasting grain, and black spiderwebbed grain lines (Photo 2 in Part 1) was scarce in these new wood imports.
It is unclear how much of this “stump wood” was exported with legitimate “salvaged wood” CITES permits—Brazil is said to have routinely granted export permits and commercial permits for this wood, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which is the US CITES Management Authority, purportedly issued import permits given that Brazil called the exports CITES-compliant and qualifying for Non-Detrimental Findings documentation, but I have been unable to verify any of that information. For about 24 years from 1993 to 2017, domestic US makers produced hundreds, if not thousands of guitars with newly imported Brazilian rosewood. Custom guitar shops and some established guitar companies produced most of these instruments, usually at premium prices.
Some luthiers and guitar collectors were ecstatic— “Brazilian was back!” Others were cautious—many luthiers suspected that all was not as it was represented to be with this “stump (salvaged) wood,” and they refused to use it. Luthiers Mercantile International (LMI), at the time the largest lutherie wood supplier in the US, initially offered the “salvaged wood,” but they soon realized that many export documents were poorly concealed falsehoods and so LMI dropped the wood from their catalogue in about 2002, with that explanation. Many potential users also realized that much of this “CITES-approved salvaged wood” and ”pre-CITES wood” possibly originated with live, recently harvested trees, not from stumps or any other non-living source, and much was probably smuggled internationally as well. For example, in 2007 US and Brazilian law enforcement officials uncovered a crime ring that had smuggled over 13 tons of Brazilian rosewood primarily into the US, which resulted in 23 arrests in both nations. “Salvaged Brazilian rosewood” shipments declined with the decline in domestic Brazilian wood sources and purportedly because of the significant cost of harvesting taproot wood, until 2017, when CITES tightened its rules on all rosewoods and on many other tropical hardwoods. That action spelled the end of Brazilian rosewood exports including salvaged wood. Consequentially, Brazilian rosewood imports to the US again dwindled to near zero. Some lutherie wood suppliers still offer Brazilian rosewood back/sides sets, fingerboards, and bridge blanks with legitimate (“pre-CITES”) documentation, at soaring prices depending on color and figure. Current Brazilian rosewood back/side sets are far more expensive than for any other commonly available tonewood wood except for sets from the infamous “The Tree,” an enormous bigleaf mahogany tree felled in 1965 in British Honduras (now Belize), which has yielded some amazing “quilted” figured wood. The same note regarding the scarcity of “classical” Brazilian rosewood applies as well to the remaining available wood—relatively little resembles the quarter-sawn wood available into the 1960s (Photo 5). New guitars made with Brazilian rosewood or wood from “The Tree” may be offered for prices ranging from about $12,000 for guitars from established companies to over $30,000 for guitars from custom builders. All other rosewoods and black woods of the genus Dalbergia, and some other tropical hardwoods such as bigleaf (aka “Honduras”) mahogany, bubinga, Pernambuco, and lignum vitae are now included in CITES Appendix II. Appendix II listing permits controlled international trade, requires a CITES export permit from the exporting nation, but does not require a CITES import permit. Importing entities such as the European Union may also impose their own rules on wood imports, independent of CITES.
The paradox that resulted from CITES Appendix I protection for Brazilian rosewood was that the regulatory change with the salvaged wood exception increased exports of the wood and did not reduce the exports to near zero as was the regulatory intent. This was not the fault of the regulatory restrictions–the fault lay with 1) unscrupulous exporters, 2) the CITES-approved exception for “salvaged (stump) wood” until 2017, and with 3) whatever degree one cares to blame the exporting nations. On that score all nations that imported Brazilian rosewood after CITES Appendix I protection share the blame with the exporting nations. When CITES tightened its rules in 2017 regarding CITES-listed wood trade, that ended the paradox and reinstituted protection for all Brazilian rosewood.
To summarize, Martin, up until the mid-1960s the primary US importer of Brazilian rosewood for guitars and other stringed instruments, had to discontinue using Brazilian rosewood because the Brazilian government had discontinued exporting Brazilian rosewood logs and because the logs were already declining in quality and size, not because Martin (never) made some strange decision to deliberately undermine its own reputation. Martin readily switched to East Indian rosewood and they never looked back—the tone and craftsmanship of their guitars remained first-rate despite laments to the contrary, and the D-28 and its relatives with East Indian rosewood backs and sides are still strong players in the ever-expanding acoustic guitar industry. Many other US guitar makers also began to use East Indian rosewood. Six takeaways from the foregoing chronicle include: 1) Googling the topics discussed here often retrieves agenda-driven, conflicting, and potentially misleading information regarding Brazilian and other rosewoods in musical instruments, and, too often, bad legal advice on owning and traveling with instruments made with Brazilian rosewood; 2) The foregoing chronicle provides no legal or other advice –direct all questions regarding all aspects of the realities and legalities of Brazilian rosewood in musical instruments or in other forms to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, CITES Management Authority; 3) East Indian rosewood is a beautiful, first-rate tonewood that is rapidly diminishing in availability, due to overharvesting, bans on log and some lumber exports, and ever-increasing customer demand (sound familiar?). Prices for East Indian rosewood luthier tonewood sets and finished guitars are already increasing, and East Indian rosewood, already protected under CITES Appendix II, could follow Brazilian rosewood into CITES Appendix I territory; 4) The wooden-backed guitars of a rapidly approaching tomorrow may eschew tropical hardwoods altogether and routinely feature domestic maple, cherry, birch, and walnut backs and sides—thankfully, all are good easy-to-work tonewoods often with curly or birdseye figure, in great supply and the hardwood forests are managed so that CITES and US Endangered Species Act involvement is unlikely; 5) Truthfully, the musical instrument industry used relatively little Brazilian rosewood, compared with the furniture and cabinet industries, globally and domestically. However, the source of Brazilian rosewood was the same for all industries that used the wood, which means that all such industries are affected equally by any pertinent regulations; 6) Brazilian rosewood is not back, and it is unlikely ever to be.
Addendum: Martin imported whole East Indian rosewood logs beginning in the late1960s, and in 1975 they constructed at the Martin factory in Nazareth PA a specialized sawmill with a behemoth bandsaw that could break down the huge logs to book-matched guitar backs and sides. FRETS magazine (August 1979) published an interesting article about the Martin mill and log sawing process. Martin used that system for a year or two until the larger East Indian rosewood exporting nations such as India and Indonesia stopped exporting whole logs–they wanted to keep much of the millwork within the nations’ borders. Martin and other US companies have worked with the exporters to cut back/sides sets expertly on site in Asia, which again shows that well-established US guitar brands readily adapt to change. According to the FRETS article, after the log imports ended, Martin dedicated the sawmill to outsourced lumber and millwork, nothing to do with instruments, and the sawmill presumably continues to work in that role.
This narrative has illustrated broadly the eventful journey something as mundane as a particular wood species can make in relatively little time. No doubt Martin and other guitar companies regarded the change from Brazilian rosewood as more a nuisance than as an event that would endanger their collective prosperity, and they were proven correct quickly. That some guitar enthusiasts seemingly regarded the change as catastrophic was hardly surprising, yet to my knowledge no guitar company’s sales declined, at least not because of the change from Brazilian rosewood to East Indian rosewood. Other guitar woods are likely to change as well. Watch for the “Brazilian rosewood lament” to subside and return as the “East Indian rosewood lament.”
Photo 5. A bookmatched inverted slab-sawn Brazilian rosewood back set (joined, glued, and thinned) from “salvaged wood” sold in the US in 2000. Slab sawing may yield “cathedral grain” as in the joined back set shown here, which in turn results in the vast difference in color, grain, and figure from the guitars in Part 1, Photos 1, 3, and 4. The set shown here was near the high end of color and grain among the sets of slab-sawn “salvaged wood” offered for sale from 1993 through 2017.
