To Create Beautiful Things from a Beautiful Thing

I enjoyed reading A Reverence for Wood by Eric Sloane. My wife, Rebecca, gave this to me recently as a gift. The book highlights the important role that wood has played in the development of American life and culture and touches on topics such as the aesthetics of wood, wooden implements, and carpentry.

Mr. Sloane rightly comments ~

That century of magnificent awareness preceding the Civil War was the age of wood. Wood was not accepted simply as the material for building a new nation – it was an inspiration. Gentle to the touch, exquisite to contemplate, tractable in creative hands, stronger by weight than iron, wood was, as William Penn had said, “a substance with a soul”. It spanned rivers for man; it built his home and heated it in the winter; man walked on wood, slept in it, sat on wooden chairs at wooden tables, drank and ate the fruits of trees from wooden cups and dishes. From cradle of wood to coffin of wood, the life of man was encircled by it.

I also found this an enjoyable inclusion ~

The heft and feel of a well-worn handle,
The sight of shavings that curl from a blade;
The logs in the woodpile, the sentiment of huge beams in an old-fashioned house;
The smell of fresh cut timber and the pungent fragrance of burning leaves;
The crackle of kindling and the hiss of burning logs.
Abundant to all the needs of man,
how poor the world would be without wood.

Everard Hinrichs

There is something about wood ~ something about working with it that I find enjoyable. I consider it a blessing to create with wood; to create beautiful things from a beautiful thing.

JIM