The Hardanger fiddle carries four bowed strings over four or five understrings that ring on their own, and a scroll carved as a dragon head. Its surface matters as much as its sound: black *rosing* drawn in pen and ink directly onto shellac-varnished spruce and maple, with mother-of-pearl and bone let into fingerboard and tailpiece.

This system works the way that surface works. Amber varnished wood is the ground, not a decorative panel on top of black. Ink sits in the finish as rules, tendrils and paired curls that fill a frame and stop at its border. Pearl and bone appear only at edges, catching light. Nothing here is vector-clean — the line varies in weight.