Discover Mid-America — April 2011
The Exotic look: One slice at a time
Evaluating wood used as veneers in furniture made in the first half of the 20th century can be a confusing process. After oak, cherry, maple, walnut and mahogany, how many others can you identify?
When confronted with the list of possible woods, the task can be absolutely daunting. In the 1920s it wasn’t so confusing. Widely used veneers were limited to things like gum, mahogany, maple, rosewood, tulip wood and walnut.
But things got more complicated after the Depression began. In 1929, new entries included avodire, Macassar ebony, Carpathian elm, satinwood and zebra wood. In the lean years during the 1930s, along came acacia, amboyna, bubinga, claro, kelobra, koa, orientalwood, paduak, prima vera and paldao, among others. Can you positively identify any of those? With one or two exceptions, I can’t either.
The exact identity of a piece of exotic veneer doesn’t really seem all that important if you know the basics about a piece of furniture, such as its derivative style, base wood, time period when it was made, and if you if have the opportunity to conduct a thorough survey of its condition.
The exact identity of a piece of veneer can be complicated not only by the exotic nature of the wood itself but by clever ways of cutting the wood to produce a specific pattern in the veneer. The most obvious example of this is the quarter sawing of oak to produce tiger eye veneer or solid lumber. Any wood can be quarter sawn but the effect is most dramatic in oak. But some examples of creative cutting are too unstable to produce solid lumber and exist only as thin sheets of veneer.
Bookmatch – The chest made by Berkey & Gay in the 1920s beautifully shows crotch cut mahogany veneer in a perfectly bookmatched pattern.
A prime example of this is crotch cut veneer, most often seen in mahogany but also sometimes seen in walnut and birch. Crotch cutting makes slices of veneer taken from the wood at the intersection of two major branches of the tree, showing the divergence of grain patterns in different directions. This confusing array of grain patterns in multiple directions produces the “flames” or “feathers” seen in veneers cut in this manner.
Another example of creative cutting became a favorite of Depression-era manufacturers. That was the process of “stump cutting” or “butt cutting” walnut trees. After the timber was harvested the remaining stump was recovered and veneer was cut from that portion of the stump where the roots begin to diverge from the main stump. This process resulted in the eye-catching, seemingly three dimensional grain pattern found in some Depression-era headboards, foot boards and drawer fronts.
Yet one more exotic veneer could be recovered from some stumps. Some stumps were diseased or distressed, producing a series of bumps in the wood. This portion of the stump was carefully sliced to produce walnut burl veneer, one of the rarer forms of American veneer. The pattern was created as a result of natural forces on the tree, but there was another pattern of distress not caused by nature. A wood that is very similar in appearance to walnut burl is Carpathian elm burl and it’s often used as a less expensive substitute, for example, in automobile dashboards. It comes from the Carpathian Mountains of France and it is thought that, in some cases, Dutch elm disease causes the pattern to develop.
In Europe, some timber merchants employed a technique called “pollarding” to produce a burl-look veneer. Younger trees were ongoingly trimmed of upper branches to force the tree to produce new branches lower on the trunk. After years of this technique, the trunk would be covered in new branches of all ages. Then the tree was harvested and the wood cut into veneer that reflected the many new branches, reproducing the effect of a burl cut.
One of the most exotic cuts of veneer does not rely on a cutting technique but a method of actually finding it. That veneer is bird’s eye maple. The wood is dotted with small circles that resemble eyes and the veneer has a shimmering quality. There is no known cause for the effect and it cannot be detected from the exterior of the tree. In fact, it’s not even limited to maple. It has been found in walnut, mahogany, beech, birch and ash trees, but is most commonly found in sugar maple (Acer saccharum) trees around the Great Lakes.
However, it isn’t always necessary to use exotic woods to produce startling effects in wood furniture. Since veneer is usually cut in successive layers of very thin wood called “flitches,” it’s relatively easy to make designs on furniture surfaces using a technique called “bookmatching.” This process places two consecutive flitches side by side with one reversed so that they are a mirror image of each other, showing exactly the same grain pattern. An extension of bookmatching is “diamond matching,” where one uses four flitches in a mirror image arrangement. Good use of common veneers has often produced uncommon furniture.
Send your comments, questions and pictures to me at P0 Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423 or info@furnituredetective.com
Visit Fred’s website at www.furnituredetective.com. His book “HOW TO BE A FURNITURE DETECTIVE” is available for $18.95 plus $3.00 S&H. Send check or money order for $21.95 to Fred Taylor, PO Box 215, Crystal River, FL 34423.
Fred and Gail Taylor’s DVD, “IDENTIFICATION OF OLDER & ANTIQUE FURNITURE”, ($17.00 + $3.00 S&H) and a bound compilation of the first 60 columns of “COMMON SENSE ANTIQUES by Fred Taylor” ($25.00 + $3.00 S&H) are also available at the same address. For more information call (800) 387-6377, fax (352) 563-2916, or e-mail info@furnituredetective.com.