This prevents cracks in a way that purfling cannot.

Inexpensive instruments may have no purfling and instead simulate the appearance with paint.

Backs are also purfled, but in their case the purfling is less structurally important than for the top.

Some fine old violins have scribed or painted rather than inlaid purfling on the back.

False f-holes and purfling were painted onto the body in order to resemble the upright bass.

Early specimens are highly arched but later ones have medium arching and elaborate double purfling.

Today plastic purfling is commonplace in mass-produced instruments.

The purfling's joints are often cut on the straight and not on the bias as was traditional, in the middle in the pin.

Sianis' instruments have a rather full arching, narrow purfling in very nicely channelled edges, and stiff f-holes.

Even his early instruments are well carved, showing skilful purfling (the thin inlay of veneer round the entire edge of an instrument).

Fifteen thousand feet below us flowed the Hunza River and edging it, like fine purfling, the Karakoram Highway.

"I carve the scrolls, and Peter does this purfling - the inlays around the edges, and the edges," Ms. Moes explained.

We notice Guarneri's influence in Camilli's, work particularly in the outline, the purfling, and the way Camillo cuts the notches of the f-hole.

While purfling is attractive, it is also functional: if the instrument is struck, the purfling can prevent cracking of the wood.

However, the precision with which he carved the heads and inserted the purfling quickly marked him as one of the most dextrous craftsmen in the world, a prime example of this being the 1690 "Tuscan" violin.

For a while they followed a mountain stream edged with a lacy purfle of winter's last ice.