Photo Credit (CC 2.0 license): Ian Burt
Among the pantheon of renowned hardwoods, few have been as desired, loved and craved as Brazilian rosewood. This eye-catching tropical hardwood has been used for fine cabinetwork, exquisite furniture and celebrated musical instruments for hundreds of years. And yet, it is almost a ghost today; the precious wood has been so coveted that it has been nearly logged to extinction.
Brazilian rosewood (scientific name: Dalbergia nigra) goes by a number of trade names, including Bahia rosewood, Rio rosewood, Pianowood and Jacaranda. But regardless of what it’s called in the woodworking industry, this illustrious timber is always immensely beautiful.
The highly-figured timber has a rich, deep chocolate color with reddish or even purplish overtones. Its distinctive, black-marbled grain pattern can give it a striking, almost variegated, appearance under certain circumstances. When worked, Brazilian rosewood, like all true rosewoods, gives off the unmistakable scent of roses – hence its name.
As if its tremendous beauty was not enough, Brazilian rosewood has also been endowed with superb physical characteristics. The wood has considerably greater hardness and crushing strength than either white oak or rock maple – two temperate hardwoods famed for their strength and toughness. Rosewood is also remarkably dense, with a specific gravity of 0.84 – just less than that of water.
But Brazilian rosewood’s most outstanding attribute is undoubtedly its legendary acoustic qualities. This highly resonant wood sports rich, warm tones with unparalleled sustain and clarity. In fact, many musical professionals consider it the finest tonewood in existence.
As a result, the world’s most famous instrument makers have naturally gravitated towards this most perfect of woods. Classic guitars such as the Martin Dreadnought, Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul were all produced from Brazilian rosewood, as were some of the finest Steinway pianos.
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Brazilian rosewood is native to the Atlantic coastal rainforests of Brazil. And while it does grow in other parts of South America, the eastern Brazilian states of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais, Espirito Santo, Sao Paulo and Bahia are its preferred environment. This is where it grows most abundantly and robustly, reaching heights of well over 100 feet (30 meters) with trunk diameters of more than 3 feet (1 meter). Unfortunately, relentless logging by the timber industry decade after decade has inexorably whittled down its population.
But we can’t lay the blame for the loss of this stately tree exclusively at the feet of conventional loggers. In addition to its obvious use as a fine cabinetwood, Brazilian rosewood has also been harvested and processed for its essential oils, which were indispensable to the perfume trade. In fact, when the world’s first designer fragrance, Chanel No5, was launched in 1921, it used Brazilian rosewood oil as one of its primary ingredients.
Loss of habitat has also plagued the ill-fated wonder tree. Over the course of the 20th century, the rapid growth of the Brazilian megalopolises of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and Salvador permanently eliminated much of the coastal rainforest ecosystem it had occupied. Further inland, slash and burn farming, coupled with industrial-scale cattle ranching, fragmented the rainforest habitat that the tree so loved. As a result, few of the magnificent rosewood trees that once towered over the Brazilian countryside remain today.
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By the 1950s, timber from Brazilian rosewood was becoming increasingly difficult to source in the commercial quantities required by fine furniture and instrument makers. By the time the 1960s arrived, the supply situation had become critical. Most U.S. guitar manufacturers stopped using the tropical hardwood in the late 1960s. U.S. and European furniture makers quickly followed suit as rosewood timber stockpiles collapsed. Consequently, vintage Brazilian rosewood guitars and furniture are highly desirable today.
Finally, in 1992 Brazilian rosewood was belatedly added to the CITES international treaty on endangered plants and animals. Dalbergia nigra is registered in Appendix I of CITES, which lists the most critically endangered species. Consequently, the wood is subjected to extremely strict international trade controls. This makes exporting Brazilian rosewood across international borders in any form, finished or raw, effectively illegal without an export permit or re-export certificate.
In many ways, Brazilian rosewood is the spiritual twin of that doomed, but marvelous Caribbean hardwood – Cuban mahogany. They are both tropical hardwoods with exceptional beauty and physical properties that were driven to near extinction by overzealous loggers, craftsmen and consumers.
However, Brazilian rosewood is not the only rosewood species available to woodworkers. East Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia), Honduran rosewood (Dalbergia stevensonii), Cocobolo (Dalbergia retusa) and Amazon rosewood (Dalbergia spruceana) are all commercially available woods belonging to the rosewood genus – true rosewoods. These true rosewoods share very similar tonal and physical characteristics to Brazilian rosewood and are often used as substitutes for the now unobtainable ideal.
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Predictably, after the supply of Brazilian rosewood timber dwindled in the late 1960s, these surrogate rosewood species experienced exceedingly high demand. Consequently, on January 2, 2017 all rosewood species (other than Dalbergia nigra, which had been added to Appendix I in 1992) were added to Appendix II of the CITES treaty. Appendix II is less restrictive than Appendix I, but still prevents most international trade in the raw timber of a listed species.
Luckily, any rosewood already inside a country, regardless of whether it is timber or finished product, is perfectly legal to buy, sell and own, provided it is does not cross national borders. Because East Indian rosewood, Honduran rosewood, Amazon rosewood and Cocobolo were just recently subject to the CITES treaty, there are still considerable stockpiles of these desirable woods available for high end woodworkers. If you ever wanted a fine rosewood instrument, sculpture or other objet d’art, now is the time to act, before these rare woods disappear forever.
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