Coastal Bahia. Paubrasilia echinata is endemic to this forest and grows wild nowhere else.
Photo: Malcoln Oliveira / Pexels
Section 5 of 5
Collections: Public holdings, planted stands, and the forest itself as the collection that matters most.
The named museum and institutional holdings — Phoenix, the Ashmolean, the Cité de la Musique — and the Atlantic Forest itself as the collection that matters most.
Start hereWhat Is Left of the Forest the Wood Came Out Of
The forest survives as fragments in farmed land. The coastal belt held most of the pernambuco.
The Dye That Named a Country
Dyewood chips and the red they yield. The dye trade ran for 250 years before the bow trade began.
Planting Back What the Trade Took: the Documented Replanting Programmes
Seedling trays. Pernambuco takes decades to reach a size a bow stick can be cut from.
The Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix: What a Public Collection Records
Phoenix holds bows in a public collection, catalogued and open to view, which a private holding is not.
Oxford and Paris: Two Collections, Two Approaches to the Same Object
Two catalogues, two philosophies: the bow as art history, or as part of an instrument's working life.