We are now in Rome for a flute festival, and this past week was very intense for me to be sure I could give the last coat of varnish to seal there all my work and let it dry for the ten days we are off now. In the video above, a summary of the week.
Pernambuco crises
I know I very recently wrote about this, but the date of the CITES convention is coming closer, and I have more detailed info to share.
At this link you will find a detailed and well-written article by Ben Hebbert. It’s not only entertaining but also very informative about the efforts made by bow and instrument makers to conserve pernambuco.
While writing, I followed Lynn Hannings talk about the pernambuco crisis at the Women in Lutherie conference 2022.
The consequences of pernambuco entering appendix 1 of CITES are many and variegated. As an example: even if you have a regular certificate for your bow that attests that it was made pre-2007 (a certificate that will probably cost around 75$ per year and has to be renovated every year), you can safely enter a nation only from a port with CITES-instructed operators. It means you can enter the USA only in New York. If you try to enter somewhere else, your bow could be confiscated. And the insurance does not cover the loss of the item for confiscation nor damages caused by customs officers.
A significant worry is that if a resource is unavailable anymore (if pernambuco is not available anyway in the future -once in appendix 1, it cannot exit in the future and return in appendix 2), everybody will lose interest in recovering it. Projects like IPCI will lose their funds and donors, and it will be much harder to go on planting trees and recover the species.
Please read the proposal at this link, and consider supporting the Alliance with a donation.
Featured video of the week:
Here the whole talk by Lynn Hannings, very informative, scaring, touching. Watch till the end!
Varnishing week