Hemlock Storywood

You can read a lot into the grain of a piece of wood. Layered on year by year, we are treated to a detailed record of when branches began to grow, how the sun shone and rain fell, what hardships the tree encountered, and how long it lived.

Storywood is a series of simple forms made from characterful pieces of wood from the Using Trees collection. Each has been meticulously prepared: cut to length, handplaned and sanded to a high grit. They are objects to touch, ogle and engage with over time. Each piece comes packaged up with a short note from Zac describing some of what can be seen in its grain.

The Storywood series comes out of Zac's 'Other Wood Pieces' exhibition presented at the Cooper Union (New York).

PIECE NOTES: A hemlock blown down by the wind and salvaged for lumber, this piece is an offcut from a large member of a log cabin that was being prepared at Haliburton Forest during a visit. A large fissure that separates both radial and tangential grain demonstrates the species' tendency to form large splits during drying that can make its use a challenge. These pieces exhibit a sort of meta striping: their rings show relatively even early and late wood growth patterns as well as intermittent eras of fast and slow growth. The effect is a smooth gradient for the eye to follow.

RING COUNT: est. 180

DIMENSIONS: 165 x 165 x 130-165 mm