African Blackwood
Conservation status
Near Threatened (IUCN 2.3)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Rosids
Order:	Fabales
Family:	Fabaceae
Subfamily:	Faboideae
Genus:	Dalbergia
Species:	D. melanoxylon
Binomial name
Dalbergia melanoxylon Guill. & Perr.

Dalbergia melanoxylon (African Blackwood, Grenadilla, or Mpingo) is a flowering plant in the family Fabaceae, native to seasonally dry regions of Africa from Senegal east to Eritrea and south to the Transvaal in South Africa. The tree is an important timber species in its native areas; it is used in the manufacture of musical instruments^[1] and fine furniture. Populations and genomic resources for genetic biodiversity maintenance in parts of its native range are threatened by overharvesting due to poor or absent conservation planning and by the species' low germination rates.^[1]

It is a small tree, reaching 4–15 m tall, with grey bark and spiny shoots. The leaves are deciduous in the dry season, alternate, 6–22 cm long, pinnately compound, with 6-9 alternately arranged leaflets. The flowers are white and produced in dense clusters. The fruit is a pod 3–7 cm long, containing one to two seeds.

Uses[link]

The dense, lustrous wood ranges from reddish to pure black. It is generally cut into small billets or logs with its sharply demarcated bright yellow white sapwood left on to assist in the slow drying so as to prevent cracks developing. Good quality "A" grade African Blackwood commands high prices on the commercial timber market. The tonal qualities of African Blackwood are particularly valued when used in woodwind instruments, principally clarinets, oboes, transverse flutes, piccolos, Highland pipes, and Northumbrian pipes.^[2] Dereing Banjo Company uses Blackwood ("granadillia") to construct the tone ring in its John Hartford model banjo. Deeering indicates that rhis reduces weight versus brass/bronze tone rings, and that the wood "plays in" (improves in tone) with use. Furniture makers from the time of the Egyptians have valued this timber. A story states that it has even been used as ballast in trading ships and that some enterprising Northumbrian pipe makers used old discarded Blackwood ballast to great effect. The German knife company Wusthof has also begun to sell a series of knives with blackwood handles due to the wood's moisture repellent qualities. Gresso, a cell phone manufacturer based in Russia, recently began selling luxury cell phones whose casing is made from African Blackwood.^[3]

Due to overuse, the mpingo tree is severely threatened in Kenya and needing attention in Tanzania and Mozambique. The trees are being harvested at an unsustainable rate, partly because of illegal smuggling of the wood into Kenya, but also because the tree takes upwards of 60 years to mature.

Relation to other woods[link]

• African Blackwood is no longer regarded as ebony, a name now reserved for a limited number of timbers yielded by the genus Diospyros; these are more of a matte appearance and are more brittle.
• The genus Dalbergia yields other famous timbers such as Brazilian Rosewood (Dalbergia nigra), Dalbergia cearensis and cocobolo (Dalbergia retusa).

Names[link]

Other names by which the tree is known include babanus and grenadilla, which appear as loanwords in various local English dialects.

Conservation[link]

There are two organisations involved in the conservation of African blackwood, the Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative and the African Blackwood Conservation Project.

The Mpingo Conservation & Development Initiative (MCDI, formerly the Mpingo Conservation Project) is involved in research, awareness raising and practical conservation of African Blackwood. Conservation of Mpingo and its natural habitat can be achieved by ensuring that local people living in mpingo harvesting areas receive a fair share of the revenue created, thus providing them with an incentive to manage the habitat in an environmentally friendly manner. In order to achieve this the MCDI is helping communities to get Forest Stewardship Certification. Link http://www.mpingoconservation.org/ and http://www.sustainableblackwood.org/.

The African Blackwood Conservation Project works around Mount Kilimanjaro replanting African Blackwood trees, and in conservation education. It also works with adult and women's groups in the promotion of environmentally sound land uses. Link http://www.blackwoodconservation.org/index.html

Small growers in Naples, Florida have been successful in growing African blackwood there. Growth habit in Florida yields taller, larger trees, and the rich soil combined with ample nutrients and long growing season yields timber of superior quality at more sustainable rates. Hopefully ventures like this will be able to take strain off of African reserves and allow this timber to be used in the future.

Footnotes[link]

References and external links[link]

• World Conservation Monitoring Centre (1998). Dalbergia melanoxylon. 2006. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. www.iucnredlist.org. Retrieved on 11 May 2006.
• ARKive - images and movies of the African blackwood (Dalbergia melanoxylon)
• Tanzania: Protecting the World's Most Expensive Tree
• FAO factsheet
• Winrock Forestry factsheet
• Global Trees factsheet
• Mpingo conservation
• Sustainable Blackwood - the Sound and Fair campaign
• Some facts about the wood
• Direct source for local Mozambican African Blackwood
• ENVIRONMENT-TANZANIA: Protecting the World's Most Expensive Tree
• Online source for Mozambican African Blackwood
• Dalbergia melanoxylon in West African plants - A Photo Guide.

Dana Bourgeois is a luthier who heads a small guitar shop, Pantheon Guitars, in Lewiston, Maine. He makes traditionally styled acoustic guitars used in bluegrass and other acoustic music genres. His customers include Ricky Skaggs, Skip Cherryholmes, Ry Cooder, Vince Gill, Lee Roy Parnell, James Taylor, and Guy Clark. [1]

External links[link]

• Pantheon Guitars
• A profile that originally appeared in Bowdoin magazine, Vol. 72, No. 2, Winter 2001

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Todd Taylor
Member of the Iowa House of Representatives from the 34th district 54th (1995 – 2003)
Incumbent
Assumed office 1995
Preceded by	Richard Running
Personal details
Born	(1966-05-21) May 21, 1966 (age 46) Ames, Iowa
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Kim
Residence	Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Religion	Community of Christ
Website	Taylor's website

Todd Taylor (born May 21, 1966) is the Iowa State Representative from the 34th District. He has served in the Iowa House of Representatives since 1994. He received his BA from Graceland College and his BS from the University of Northern Iowa.

As of September 2011^[update], Taylor serves on several committees in the Iowa House - the Appropriations, Labor, and State Government committees. He also serves as ranking member of the Justice System Appropriations Subcommittee and as a member of the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Council and of the Statewide Fire and Police Retirement Board of Trustees.

Taylor was first elected in a June 27, 1995 special election, succeeding fellow Democrat Richard Running in the 54th District. When the districts were redrawn for the 2002 election, Taylor won re-election into the new 34th District.

Electoral history[link]

*incumbent

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Todd Taylor

Iowa portal

• Representative Todd Taylor official Iowa General Assembly site
• Todd Taylor State Representative official constituency site
• Biography, voting record, and interest group ratings at Project Vote Smart
• Campaign contributions at the National Institute for Money in State Politics

George Lowden 2009

George Lowden is a guitar maker, luthier, based in Downpatrick, County Down, Northern Ireland. He constructs acoustic guitars, steel and nylon strung.

History[link]

Early life[link]

In 1951 George Lowden was born in Belfast Northern Ireland.

Company[link]

In 1976 - 79 his first guitars with A-frame bracing and the dolphin voicing profiles were made in 1976 and in many ways have established the Lowden guitar’s sound.

The first Irish studio/workshop, in 6a High Street, Bangor employed 4 trainee guitar makers, Colin ‘Dusty’ Miller, Frank Kernaghan, Sam Irwin and Michael Hull. It produced approximately 100 guitars during this period, which can be identified by small blue rectangular labels.

Beginning in 1980, copies of his guitars were made in Japan by a small group of luthiers near Nagoya.

In 1985, as a result of the rise in interest for all electronic instruments in music, sales of acoustic instruments slumped worldwide and the owners of the Japanese factory decided to close it and move production of Lowden guitars to a larger factory where other brands were made. George was concerned about this outcome and decided to try setting up a new factory in Ireland. By way of very little capital and through the help of an investor (David Jebb); George rented a building in Bangor, Co. Down and began to employ and train new craftsmen.

1986 Micky Uchida, (a Pierre Bensusan fan and guitar maker himself from Japan) arrived in Ireland to stay with the Lowden family and asked George if he could come to work for him. Micky had been trained in classical guitar building but was interested in learning about steel strings. A short time after his arrival in Ireland with his wife Izumi, George offered Micky the factory manager's position after observing his obvious talent as a craftsman and luthier.

Lowden Guitars of this period were labelled with a slightly smaller version of the current oval label and approximately 500-600 guitars were made in each of the first three years then approximately 1,000 per year thereafter.

A New Chapter[link]

Eventually in 1988, the company ran out of funds. George was uncomfortable continuing with an under-funded business unable to meet its commitments, and decided to close it down. On being informed of this, the Company’s bank asked George to agree to receivership, as they believed that the company could be sold with George’s agreement for future co-operation.

A group of local people put together a consortium, headed by Andy Kidd, (whose background was as a recording engineer and record producer) to buy the company out of receivership. George Lowden signed a licensing agreement with this new company. This ensured that he retained personal ownership of the Lowden designs and trademark and enabled him to provide quality control and new designs while remaining independent from the company. The model range at that time was much more limited than it is now but the beginnings of a dealership network had already been established in parts of Europe and the USA.

France[link]

1989 George moved with his wife and children to France and worked as an independent luthier designing and building his new range of classical guitars as well as his steel strings. During this time, he also designed new models for the company, and checked quality on periodic visits back to Ireland. He built, as he still does, between 10 and 15 instruments each year for individual musicians who commission a personal guitar.

New Designs…[link]

Some time later George continued his implementation of new designs by introducing the ‘Jazz’ nylon string electric acoustic.

In order to satisfy an increasing demand for more ornate instruments, Andy then asked George to design a series of guitars with more inlays, as the ‘Standard’ guitars were too plain for some musicians' taste. Thus was born the ‘Premier’, or “35” series with George Lowden’s version of "flash". This series has been the most successful of all the Lowden designs with their figured exotic woods and inlays combined with selected grades of soundboard tonewoods.

A New chapter: Change of Ownership[link]

1998 The acoustic guitar market had begun to flourish again during the 90's, but the company, significantly hampered by under-investment, had not been able to achieve its potential. In November 1998, keen to participate in a progressive plan to develop the business further, George Lowden, along with Steve McIlwrath and Alastair McIlveen set up a new holding company to buy a controlling interest in the Lowden Guitar Company. George’s vision was “that the company should become as good as the guitars themselves…”^[1]

25th Anniversary[link]

In November 1998, a visitor to the factory showed up guitar case in hand with the Lowden guitar serial No.1. The very first guitar George designed and built. This was an excellent reminder of how far the Lowden Guitar had come. As a celebration of this long journey, George designed the 25th anniversary limited edition model. “My aim with the design and build details was to make available in reasonable numbers, a guitar which was as close as possible to the guitars which I am only able to build personally for a very few players each year under my full name. I therefore included as many as I could of the construction, voicing and cosmetic details, found in my own guitars in this limited edition of 101 instruments.”^[1]

Millenium Twins[link]

By this time, the community of Lowden enthusiasts had grown considerably and players were not only attracted by Lowden’s tone, looks and attention to detail, but also by the fact that they were not mass produced. Requests increased for ‘special edition’ Lowdens and in order to fulfil this demand George designed the Millennium Twins. “As a luthier, I find that designing a few ‘special’ guitars does stretch my creative abilities and I enjoy that challenge. I believe this does help to develop the art of guitar making in a much wider sense as well. I introduced the limited edition Millennium twins with their matching sets of figured walnut back and sides and adjacent sets of redwood tops sourced from trees, which had fallen naturally.”^[1]

In 2003 the License with the Lowden Guitar Co was ended and production of Lowden guitars at the Newtownards factory ceased at the end of December 2003.

Looking to the Future[link]

Lowden guitars are currently handcrafted in a small workshop in Downpatrick under the direct supervision of George.

Eric Clapton, Jan Akkerman, Vince Gill, Mike Oldfield, Pierre Bensusan, Alex de Grassi, Peter Finger, Nick Harper, Don Ross, Richard Thompson, the late Eric Roche, Paul Brady, Lee Rogers, and Foy Vance use Lowden Guitars.^[2]

References[link]

1. ^ ^{a b c} [1],.
2. ^ George Lowden Guitars

• [2]
• The Eric Clapton website has an article about a charity auction in 2004 held by Christies where Eric Clapton raised $7.5 million by selling his guitars. Lot 32, His 1996 George Lowden O38, guide price of $5,000-$7,000 sold for $41,825. Read it here.
• the late Eric Roche does a run down of his equipment starting with Lowden Guitars.
• Berkowitz, Kenny; "Lowden Guitars", Acoustic Guitar March 1999, issue 79,
• Bensusan, Pierre has retired his jumbo S22 Lowden guitar after 25 years of service, and is using a new F body Lowden Pierre Bensusan Signature model starting 2009.
• de Grassi, Alex; answers questions about his music and equipment
• Ohlschmidt, Jim; "[3] Louise Taylor]", Acoustic Guitar, issue 98, dated February 2001, dealt with Richard Thompsons equipment,

External links[link]

• Lowden Guitars Website
• Lowden guitar database on Guitarbench.com