:: A couple of words about materials

 Of the 141 lutes listed in the Raymond Fugger inventory (1566)  we  know the materials from which the shells of 101 were made  and  only 38 of these are of European provenance. The various  imported  materials used (whalebone and cane, ebony and ivory,  snake-  king- brazil- guaiac- and sandalwood) are almost all to be  found in surviving instruments from throughout the lute's long history, and  well reflect the taste for the exotic of one of the  richest and most  powerful families in Europe. But the use of  European woods speaks  a different language and reflects a  solidly established tradition  which only occasionally allows some  exceptions: maple and yew, which together with the spruce  employed for soundboards are the  basic materials of alpine  origin for generations of lutemakers who  themselves stemmed  from a well defined alpine area, and cypress, for a long time the  most widely used wood in Italy for plucked  string  instruments -  lutes and guitars, psalteries, harps and harpsichords.
 Beyond these, we know that Lucas Maler used ash, and walnut  occasionally appears in guitars and Neapolitan mandolins. That in  spite of the wide variety of available suitable materials the old  masters stuck to these few (we, modern lutemakers, are obviously  more prone to experimentation) could partly be due to  conservative traditionalism, but this praxis was definitely justified  by the fact that they well knew which materials would give constant  high quality results. Bird's eye maple seems somehow to find a  place between the two tendencies, satisfying, at once, aesthetic  and acoustical needs. All in all, we have the feeling that a  distinction was made between instruments "for playing" and "for  exhibiting", where the workmanship quality was, indeed, constant,  but the discriminating factor for the luteplayer was not necessarily  the rarity of the materials employed.

 :: About my materials

 All the woods I employ are first choice and have kept me good  company in the workshop for at least 4-5 years, but often much  longer, and the ingredients of glues, waxes and  varnishes are  exclusively of natural origin.
 The right place for ivory is in the mouths of elephants, and I am  quite happy to do without any of it. Likewise, I try and limit the  use  of tropical woods to the absolute minimum. Used with due  understanding, european woods have only advantages to offer  in  meeting all our demands, today as in the past.
 All my instruments are strung with Aquila strings, gut or synthetic,  by Mimmo Peruffo.

 :: An introduction to gut strings on the lute