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Exceptional Material Sources for the Exceptional Cabinet Maker
There is breathtaking beauty captured within the panels and upon the surfaces of our special furniture and decorative objects. How it came to be frequently lies outside of our understanding. We often walk right past the living trees that are the source of the material for the furniture maker and woodcarver, and they pass into the background of our experience, unnoticed.
The linked Article was taken from a microfiche of the Parish Registers of Southfleet, as Transcribed by Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson, Baronet, of Ightham Mote, Kent. As you can read in this limited account (there are 21 entries in the log all together), there are numerous and important references to the living landscape. Today our geographic cues are more often keyed to the architecture and "built-out" details in our environment rather than the arboreal icons of yesteryear. How many of us today understand the vernacular of the historian? “ Pollard”, “Cattered”, {sic cattering}, “Standard”? These terms were as relevant as "right” and "left” to the eighteenth century individual, but in the present day these terms and the ideograms they inspired have all but slipped away. (Link)
Today on the roadsides under power lines, the trees are still “pollard”, but for a different reason than in the past. Historically, if a forester needed some material from his woodlot he need not cut the tree entirely down. Just as he would “poll” the horns off his cattle, he could “poll” or “pollard” a few or as many limbs as he needed off his oaks or elms. Not all trees would take to “pollarding” it seems. Trees cut at the ground level was called “coppicing”, but as the surviving part of the tree about the roots would re-grow branches, animals would eat the shoots as soon as they sprouted, making it impractical. To prevent a total loss, the rootstock was “pollard” above the reach of the grazing beasts. When the fateful day came, eventually the whole tree would be cut down. When sliced, the lumber in the region of the “pollarding” would show dramatic grain variations from the numerous cutting events in the life of the tree. This material was re-sliced into thin veneer and applied to the prominent panels in highly decorated furniture objects. (Link)
The ability to manipulate this special and beautiful material that grows in the forest was not even possible until technology provided the means to properly cut the wood and stabilize the sawn lumber. The Stone Age and primitive Bronze Age techniques that predated the relatively modern steel used to crate the saws and wood-smoothing tools could not hope to produce the sophisticated surfaces necessary for the highly polished surfaces exposed in the late Renaissance. The control that would make it possible to expose and stabilize the beautiful patterns that we so highly prize today in the panels and surfaces of our cherished furniture and decorative art came from a long distillation of extremely varied sciences.
“If an extraordinarily beautiful wood grain grew in the forest, and no one cut it into lumber, would it really exist?" The artistically inspired furniture maker hears this question with the ear of their soul, and strives to create an answer. If they are truly insightful, the products of their skill resonate through the centuries. Astounding examples of this sensitivity and artistry now nurture us toward our own artistic maturity.
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