Can a lute change its stripes?

With a little help from its builder, yes. A
"stripey" lute back style gained popularity in 

A yew tree

the early 1600s. This style used a greater number of ribs in construction (anywhere from fifteen to fifty, quite an increase from the typical 9-13 of the century before), and favored yew wood where maple had been the norm. The use of yew was what allowed the striping effect. In the yew tree, there is a striking shift in color where the darker heartwood meets the lighter sapwood. Lute builders selected ribs from this area to achieve that alternation of color tone around the back of the lute.

A lute attributed to Wendelin Tieffenbrucker,
one of the renowned builders of this style. 

.

Yew striping effect

The Lute-Making Capital of the World!

... Or at least during the the second half of the sixteenth century in Europe, was a Bavarian town called Füssen. Located about 3 mile north of the Austrian border, and now revered for its violin-

Aerial view of Füssen

making history, the town was a hotbed of lute construction. It became necessary to impose regulations on their lute industry. They created a guild for lute makers to regulate activities and production standards and prices. The guild then limited the number of workshops in Füssen to twenty. This had extensive repercussions on the lute-making industry. Many luthiers moved out of the town to the rest of the Bavarian region, later to Venice, and last to Bologna and Padua. The last two would become the most important centers of of lute making in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.



Santa Maria Bouquet, Jonathan. "The Lute." Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web. 9 Dec. 2014.

"Füssen." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Aug. 2014. Web. 9 Dec. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Füssen>.