Treen (literally "of a tree") is a generic name for small handmade functional household objects made of wood. Treen is distinct from furniture, such as chairs, and cabinetry, as well as clocks and cupboards. [1] [2] Before the late 17th century, when silver, pewter, and ceramics were introduced for tableware, most small household items, boxes and tableware were carved from wood. Today, treen is highly collectable for its patina and tactile appeal. [3]
Anything from wooden plates and bowls, [4] snuff boxes and needle cases, spoons and stay busks to shoehorns and chopping boards can be classed as treen. [3] Domestic and agricultural wooden tools are also usually classed with treen.
Before the advent of cheap metal wares in industrialized societies, and later plastic, wood played a much greater part as the raw material for common objects. Turning and carving were the key manufacturing techniques. [5] The selection of wood species was important, and close-grained hardwoods such as box, beech and sycamore were particularly favoured, with occasional use of exotics, such as lignum vitae for mallet heads.
Wooden objects have survived relatively less well than those of metal or stone, and their study by archaeologists and historians has been somewhat neglected until recently. Their functional and undecorated forms have, however, been highly regarded by designers and collectors. [3]
In North America, Native Americans carved tree burls into durable wooden objects with uniquely marbled grain. [6] Burls were rare in Europe because the old-growth forests where they are commonly found had largely been logged out of existence. [7] Burl treen was found in Europe occasionally, particularly in objects intended for celebration or the upper class, but was not in wide-scale use. [7]
In contrast, burls were widely available in the virgin forests of North America. Native Americans worked these burls into domestic objects like bowls and ladles with tools such as stone blades, hot coals, and beaver teeth. [8] Native Americans traded these wooden items with European colonists, who later learned to harvest burl and carve them into treen in the style of their home countries. [6] Burl treen is considered an indigenous North American craft, and examples are found in museums and private collections of Americana. [6]
The snarled and interlaced grain of a burl makes the resulting objects stronger and less likely to split. [9] They were strong enough to be passed down over generations. [10] A variety of trees produce burls, but almost all North American burl treen (upwards of ninety percent) is made from black ash. Another five percent is made from maple, with other woods such as cherry wood, white cedar, oak, and birch making up the remainder. [9] Woodworker Michael Combs has speculated that black ash burl was favored because it is easy to work on a lathe. [8]
Kalmia latifolia, the mountain laurel, calico-bush, or spoonwood, is a species of flowering plant in the heath family Ericaceae, that is native to the eastern United States. Its range stretches from southern Maine south to northern Florida, and west to Indiana and Louisiana. Mountain laurel is the state flower of Connecticut and Pennsylvania. It is the namesake of Laurel County in Kentucky, the city of Laurel, Mississippi, and the Laurel Highlands in southwestern Pennsylvania.
A tobacco pipe, often called simply a pipe, is a device specifically made to smoke tobacco. It comprises a chamber for the tobacco from which a thin hollow stem (shank) emerges, ending in a mouthpiece. Pipes can range from very simple machine-made briar models to highly prized hand-made artisanal implements made by renowned pipemakers, which are often very expensive collector's items. Pipe smoking is the oldest known traditional form of tobacco smoking.
Wood carving is a form of woodworking by means of a cutting tool (knife) in one hand or a chisel by two hands or with one hand on a chisel and one hand on a mallet, resulting in a wooden figure or figurine, or in the sculptural ornamentation of a wooden object. The phrase may also refer to the finished product, from individual sculptures to hand-worked mouldings composing part of a tracery.
Acer negundo, also known as the box elder, boxelder maple, Manitoba maple or ash-leaved maple, is a species of maple native to North America. It is a fast-growing, short-lived tree with opposite, ash-like compound leaves. It is sometimes considered a weedy or invasive species, and has been naturalized throughout much of the world, including South America, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, much of Europe, and parts of Asia.
Woodturning is the craft of using a wood lathe with hand-held tools to cut a shape that is symmetrical around the axis of rotation. Like the potter's wheel, the wood lathe is a mechanism that can generate a variety of forms. The operator is known as a turner, and the skills needed to use the tools were traditionally known as turnery. In pre-industrial England, these skills were sufficiently difficult to be known as "the mysteries of the turners' guild." The skills to use the tools by hand, without a fixed point of contact with the wood, distinguish woodturning and the wood lathe from the machinist's lathe, or metal-working lathe.
Tableware items are the dishware and utensils used for setting a table, serving food, and dining. The term includes cutlery, glassware, serving dishes, serving utensils, and other items used for practical as well as decorative purposes. The quality, nature, variety and number of objects varies according to culture, religion, number of diners, cuisine and occasion. For example, Middle Eastern, Indian or Polynesian food culture and cuisine sometimes limits tableware to serving dishes, using bread or leaves as individual plates, and not infrequently without use of cutlery. Special occasions are usually reflected in higher quality tableware.
A burl or burr is a tree growth in which the grain has grown in a deformed manner. It is commonly found in the form of a rounded outgrowth on a tree trunk or branch that is filled with small knots from dormant buds. Burl formation is typically a result of some form of stress such as an injury or a viral or fungal infection.
A wooden spoon is a utensil commonly used in food preparation. In addition to its culinary uses, wooden spoons also feature in folk art and culture.
Khokhloma or Khokhloma painting is a style of Russian art traditionally painted on wooden household items. It is known for its curved linear features depicting vivid small flowers, berries, grasses, and leaf motifs. The Firebird, a common and popular figure from the Russian fairytales is often featured as the main subject matter.
A salt cellar is an article of tableware for holding and dispensing salt. In British English, the term can be used for what in North American English are called salt shakers. Salt cellars can be either lidded or open, and are found in a wide range of sizes, from large shared vessels to small individual dishes. Styles range from simple to ornate or whimsical, using materials including glass and ceramic, metals, ivory and wood, and plastic.
A lovespoon is a wooden spoon decoratively carved that was traditionally presented as a gift of romantic intent. The spoon is normally decorated with symbols of love, and was intended to reflect the skill of the carver. Due to the intricate designs, lovespoons are no longer used as functioning spoons and are now decorative craft items.
A salad bowl is a bowl-shaped serving dish used to serve salads, especially tossed salads.
The Hoxne Hoard is the largest hoard of late Roman silver and gold discovered in Britain, and the largest collection of gold and silver coins of the fourth and fifth centuries found anywhere within the former Roman Empire. It was found by Eric Lawes, a metal detectorist in the village of Hoxne in Suffolk, England in 1992. The hoard consists of 14,865 Roman gold, silver, and bronze coins and approximately 200 items of silver tableware and gold jewellery. The objects are now in the British Museum in London, where the most important pieces and a selection of the rest are on permanent display. In 1993, the Treasure Valuation Committee valued the hoard at £1.75 million.
A decorative box is a form of packaging that is generally more than just functional, but also intended to be decorative and artistic. Many such boxes are used for promotional packaging, both commercially and privately. Historical objects are usually called caskets if larger than a few inches in more than one dimension, with only smaller ones called boxes.
This glossary of woodworking lists a number of specialized terms and concepts used in woodworking, carpentry, and related disciplines.
Bird's eye is a type of figure that occurs within several kinds of wood, most notably hard maple. It has a distinctive pattern that resembles tiny, swirling eyes disrupting the smooth lines of grain. It is somewhat reminiscent of a burl, but it is quite different: the small knots that make the burl are missing.
A duck decoy is a man-made object resembling a duck. Duck decoys are typically used in waterfowl hunting to attract real ducks, but they are also used as collectible art pieces. Duck decoys were historically carved from wood, often Atlantic white cedar wood on the east coast of the United States, or cork. Modern ones may also be made of canvas and plastic. They are often painted to resemble various kinds of waterfowl.
Variety Unit is an exhibit building at Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont.
The Akan Drum is a drum that was made in West Africa and was later found in the Colony of Virginia in North America. It is now one of the oldest African-American objects in the British Museum and possibly one of the oldest surviving anywhere. The drum is a reminder of all three continents' involvement in the estimated twelve million people transported across the Atlantic Ocean as part of the transatlantic slave trade. The drum is normally displayed in Room 26, the North American gallery, in the British Museum.
Norm Sartorius is an American woodworker who carves fine art spoons in many styles including natural, biomorphic, abstract, symbolic, ethnic, and ceremonial. His works are in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other public and private collections. He is a frequent participant in woodworking and craft shows in America, and won the Award of Excellence in Wood at the 2015 American Craft Council show in Baltimore and the 2015 Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, DC. Since 2008, he has co-directed a grant-funded research project on the life, work, and legacy of American woodworker Emil Milan.