How Tree Rings Can Encode a Violin's Age and Place of Origin

Researchers compare tree rings from an instrument's body to other wood to estimate the instrument's age. View in browser

Image credits: Shutterstock How Tree Rings Can Encode a Violin's Age and Place of Origin Researchers compare tree rings from an instrument's body to other wood to estimate the instrument's age. Will Sullivan, Staff Writer September 30, 2021                                                                                                                                                                                (Inside Science) -- A stringed instrument holds many clues about when and where it might have been made. The wear on the body, the opacity of the wood and the type of varnish used, for example, can all hint at its origin. In recent decades, a technique called dendrochronology, which dates an instrument using the tree rings on its body, has gained popularity. This process can provide an additional way to identify if a violin might have been built by one of the famed 16th- or 17th-century luthiers in Cremona, Italy, such as Antonio Stradivari, or if it was built more recently and therefore probably worth significantly less money. "Dendrochronology is a really important and kind of revolutionary technology," said Kevin Kelly, a violin-maker in Boston, Massachusetts... Read more Copyright 2021 American Institute of Physics. Inside Science syndicates its articles, columns, blogs and videos to news organizations. To initiate syndication, or request permission to republish our content (on a one-time or continuing basis), please contact Inside Science at insidescience@aip.org. News organizations seeking permission to republish Inside Science content must fully credit Inside Science as the original source of the content, include the author byline, and republish the original, unaltered form (excluding content titles, headlines, or sub-headlines). The reprint format can be seen here. Copyright conditions and usage terms are subject to change at any time without consent or any type of prior notice. To unsubscribe from all future mailings from Inside Science please click here. To manage your email subscriptions please click here.

Inside Science is an editorially independent news service of the American Institute of Physics © 2021 American Institute of Physics 1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740 About Inside Science | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Reprint Rights  | Email alerts  |  Underwriters