Each year around this time, I like to build a flute as an homage to the Zuni, and their celebration of Summer. The macaw, and attendant coloration, is their bird symbol for Summer. Having said that, in my little Southern California beach community, we haven’t seen a real Summer in over two years, but rather various flavors of fog, drizzle, and cold. Basically it consists of 4 months of fall, 4 months of Winter, and 4 months of Spring, which looks just like Fall. I want my money back…but I digress.
This G# instrument was built from one of my least favorite woods, specifically ambrosia maple. It sounded appealing because I thought ambrosia was a fruit salad. I was wrong. It’s named for a tiny bug that burrows into the wood and gives it some interesting coloration, if it doesn’t kill the tree first. Fortunately, the damage from this little critter was minimal, providing some beautiful figuring to the material.
This build took about 90 hours, with additional ingredients to include twice dyed box elder burl, SE Asian amboyna burl, cocobolo, stones consisting of an amalgam of copper, turquoise, and spiny oyster, Paua abalone, quartz capped blue abalone, labradorite, turquoise accents, and a re-purposed Zuni earring. The flute also includes some hand colorized pyrographics. One interesting note regarding the macaw block, ….woods used for the wing overlay, were the result of feeding a maple tree colored water, during its growth cycles, then harvesting and veneering the resulting material……..Ok then, during this period of disarray, I’m hoping nobody can take your Summer away from you. Play nice.
