Identifying paper purfling

[KeiranC]

Hi all,

I have an unnamed composite cello, said to be made in southern Italy in the mid 1700s.  Everything belongs together except for the top, which is an early 19th century replacement.  

The purfling on the back is quite dark, and the black strips are impossibly thin.  I wondered if there’s a way to tell if these are paper strips, and if anyone has a guess at what the center wood is.  I know the Gagliano family used “paper,” and of course this cello isn’t that, but I’m curious if other makers used paper in their purfling.

[jacobsaunders]

I have always been jealous of people who can tell what wood purfling is made of, just by looking at the instrument. The occasional Beech or Maple might be obvious, but otherwise telling wood sorts apart from such a minute sample, and from only one direction seems a little ridiculous. My ex-Boss always used to flippantly answer the question ”what is the purfling made of”, with Erdbeerbaum (Strawberry wood), and we all tried to suppress giggling at how few people didn’t realise that strawberries don’t grow on trees. That all stopped though when someone, having had the piss taken out of him, came with a photo of an Erdbeerbaum, which it seems actually exists, from the botanical gardens in Stuttgart

[KeiranC]

4 hours ago, jacobsaunders said:

I have always been jealous of people who can tell what wood purfling is made of, just by looking at the instrument. The occasional Beech or Maple might be obvious, but otherwise telling wood sorts apart from such a minute sample, and from only one direction seems a little ridiculous. My ex-Boss always used to flippantly answer the question ”what is the purfling made of”, with Erdbeerbaum (Strawberry wood), and we all tried to suppress giggling at how few people didn’t realise that strawberries don’t grow on trees. That all stopped though when someone, having had the piss taken out of him, came with a photo of an Erdbeerbaum, which it seems actually exists, from the botanical gardens in Stuttgart

I love that!  And, I realize it’s probably impossible for anyone to ID the wood from my terrible photos- the area around the channel is so dark that it’s hard to get a good picture.

[christian bayon]

What Vatelot thought me about Napolean luthiers and the supposed paper for the black is the very neat interruption of the varnish in top of the black. Bit more of what I see on your cello.

[Ron1]

I seems that the dark center wood of the purfling may be made up of two pieces.  If so, would that aid in determining the origin of the instrument?  Or is that method too common/widespread?

[Andreas Preuss]

The ‘impossibly thin’ black strips don’t tell much. You can make impossibly thin wood shavings and use them as purfling. 
 

My personal take on the material used  for the blacks on a typical Gagliano purfling is parchment and not paper. I found all my tests with paper to imitate the Gagliano purfling unsatisfying. And I really tested a lot of options from handmade paper, wax paper, even Japan paper and nothing of that sort would bring convincing results. 

[Andreas Preuss]

On 12/9/2022 at 12:41 PM, jacobsaunders said:

I have always been jealous of people who can tell what wood purfling is made of, just by looking at the instrument. The occasional Beech or Maple might be obvious, but otherwise telling wood sorts apart from such a minute sample, and from only one direction seems a little ridiculous. My ex-Boss always used to flippantly answer the question ”what is the purfling made of”, with Erdbeerbaum (Strawberry wood), and we all tried to suppress giggling at how few people didn’t realise that strawberries don’t grow on trees. That all stopped though when someone, having had the piss taken out of him, came with a photo of an Erdbeerbaum, which it seems actually exists, from the botanical gardens in Stuttgart

I agree that it is nonsense trying to find out a specific wood type for the purfling material. But you can group different materials to characterize them. Porous woods, dense woods, woods with pronounced medular rays, darker colored woods and lighter colored woods and ‘unusual’ materials like whalebone or boxwood. 
i found it also always interesting to find out if the blacks and whites were eventually made from the same wood. For the blacks, if ebony wasn’t used, the intensity of staining can be interesting too.
 

For doing this I have a very simple looking magnifying 30x glass which was sold long ago at Kremer pigments. 


 

[Bowjob]

Could anyone please tell me whether this is the typical Neapolitan beech and paper purfling?

Thanks!

[Andreas Preuss]

On the second picture the center strip looks like beech. The other pictures are too blurry. 
 

besides, I think the ‘paper’ of gagliano purflings is stained parchement.

[Dr. Mark]

On 12/10/2022 at 5:17 PM, Andreas Preuss said:

My personal take on the material used  for the blacks on a typical Gagliano purfling is parchment and not paper. I found all my tests with paper to imitate the Gagliano purfling unsatisfying. And I really tested a lot of options from handmade paper, wax paper, even Japan paper and nothing of that sort would bring convincing results.

I want to point out that you omit to state that you tested parchment, and that it was convincingly similar.

[Blank face]

17 hours ago, Bowjob said:

Could anyone please tell me whether this is the typical Neapolitan beech and paper purfling?

Thanks!

Even if I am risking an endless repetition, the first two of you’re photos are showing definitely mitred rib joints, what is excluding any Neapolitan-no matter wether the purfling is beech or strawberry.

You better should think about a Mittenwald or Mirecourt origin.

[Bowjob]

13 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

On the second picture the center strip looks like beech. The other pictures are too blurry. 
 

besides, I think the ‘paper’ of gagliano purflings is stained parchement.

Thanks you and sorry about the photos. I tried to make better ones. Conveniently the two corners on the top treble side are damaged so they allow a good view on the purfling.

[Andreas Preuss]

1 hour ago, Bowjob said:

Thanks you and sorry about the photos. I tried to make better ones. Conveniently the two corners on the top treble side are damaged so they allow a good view on the purfling.

Thanks. 
 
The back corner doesn’t look too bad. On the third picture a part of the purfling looks on the picture like replaced. However as Blankface already pointed out, the purfling alone doesn’t make it Neapolitan. How does the rest of the instrument look like?

[Bowjob]

4 hours ago, Blank face said:

Even if I am risking an endless repetition, the first two of you’re photos are showing definitely mitred rib joints, what is excluding any Neapolitan-no matter wether the purfling is beech or strawberry.

You better should think about a Mittenwald or Mirecourt origin.

I have posted more, hopefully clearer photos. The corners don't look mitrered - at least not well :-)

NB! The images are of a Niccoló Gagliano - at least according to Beare and a very unambiguous dendro report.

[Blank face]

25 minutes ago, Bowjob said:

NB! The images are of a Niccoló Gagliano - at least according to Beare and a very unambiguous dendro report.

Now it's starting to become interesting (as long as it is a "Beare wrote"). Maybe the joints were altered during repairs or worn down at some points? The first of the new photos still looks as if one rib is covering the other at the top. Maybe we could see the rest of the instrument?

[Jeffrey Holmes]

16 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

besides, I think the ‘paper’ of gagliano purflings is stained parchement.

I suppose that's possible.  I've heard the substance of the blacks on Gaglianos described/theorized as paper, wine paper (which I believe may refer to the sturdy paper that was used for labels on casks/barrels), and corn husk.

[Andreas Preuss]

36 minutes ago, Jeffrey Holmes said:

I suppose that's possible.  I've heard the substance of the blacks on Gaglianos described/theorized as paper, wine paper (which I believe may refer to the sturdy paper that was used for labels on casks/barrels), and corn husk.

My own conclusion came from copying Gagliano and from the frustration after a dozend tests with different types of paper simply failed to imitate this special look. Parchment worked on the first shot. Thereafter I didn’t find it necessary to do more testing. If there is a non animal paper product that makes a similar appearance (?), I don’t know. I wished some restorers would spare a sample and give it to a laboratory. It shouldn’t be too difficult to tell an animal product from a plant product apart. 

[Jeffrey Holmes]

14 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

My own conclusion came from copying Gagliano and from the frustration after a dozend tests with different types of paper simply failed to imitate this special look. Parchment worked on the first shot. Thereafter I didn’t find it necessary to do more testing. If there is a non animal paper product that makes a similar appearance (?), I don’t know. I wished some restorers would spare a sample and give it to a laboratory. It shouldn’t be too difficult to tell an animal product from a plant product apart. 

To me, under magnification, the typical Gagliano black purfing strips appear fibrous... but that is far from a laboratory test!   

There is at least some historical documentation concerning paper made from corn husks in 18th century Italy, so I  guess we have a few theories to play with..

Bottom of page 366: https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA0000010_392

[Andreas Preuss]

13 hours ago, Jeffrey Holmes said:

To me, under magnification, the typical Gagliano black purfing strips appear fibrous... but that is far from a laboratory test!   

There is at least some historical documentation concerning paper made from corn husks in 18th century Italy, so I  guess we have a few theories to play with..

Bottom of page 366: https://journals.co.za/doi/pdf/10.10520/AJA0000010_392

Interesting article.

This would then require the violin maker to stain the paper. When using traditional staging methods the paper gets somehow too black. This impression is reinforced by the varnish sinking into the stained paper. At least in my experiments.

To try a robust handmade paper I used  Japan paper. It didn’t perform well when trying to insert it into the groove. (Before I glued it on the Center strip as this seems to be the most practical method). Paper, because of its fibrous nature easily gets pushed away if the purfling channel is just a fraction too narrow. And you can observe also on Neapolitan purfling small bumps on the Center strip making it a fraction too wide for the channel.
 

Paper types which were somehow easier to handle were modern machine made papers with a high glue content. But those were definitely not available. 
 

Another problem with paper is trying to make sharp ends at the corner tips. Not impossible but very time consuming to get a clean result. 
 

————

OTOH Disadvantages of parchment were rather minor concerns. 
 

most Parchements are too thick to produce the ‘Gagliano look’. To scrape down a sheet evenly isn’t fun.

i could buy already stained parchment but just to verify my own theory I tried to stain a blank sheet of parchment. As a sheet it’s pretty hard if not impossible to get a good result with the traditional tannin and Iron Sulfate. In the end I figured out that the best way to do it was first reducing the thickness then cutting strips which were then stained. The scraping of the parchment must be done on both sides because it leaves a rough surface which aided the stain to penetrate the parchment. Then it can be done quick enough to avoid swelling of the skin. This explained to me also a sort of typical thinness of Neapolitan purfling.

At the end I was pondering on the thought if Neapolitan makers didn’t use left over materials from the string production which was famous in that city in the 18th century. And maybe they got already pre stained material like from black coloured harp strings. 

Anyway, if you get me a piece of corn husk paper I’ll do certainly a test to see how it works.

[Dr. Mark]

14 hours ago, Andreas Preuss said:

Parchment worked on the first shot

That's what I was looking for - thanks.