3 minute read
Preface
What qualifies me to write this book?
It isn’t any par9cular exper9se in exo9c hardwoods but perhaps a researcher’s persistant quest for clarity bourne of a doctorate in Chemistry from the University of Oxford, a lifelong interest in China and the surname “WOOD”, which must count for something.
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I also have a collec9on of an9que wooden ar9facts and a company based in China which has afforded me the opportunity to travel oIen to that country. AIer business was done I used spare 9me to visit museums and retail outlets. During recent visits to China I have been astonished by the appearance of furniture and ar9s9c decora9ons gracing the lobbies of hotels from Beijing to Kunming, from Chengdu to Shanghai all made of precious woods liOle known in the West.
My curiosity about these exo9c woods raised many ques9ons in my mind and the answer to one ques9on inevitably led to another. The quest for answers led me to search out shops and galleries and the body of informa9on thus accumulated becomes a resource that merits sharing with others. So these pages contain a dis9lla9on of informa9on from reliable sources that has been checked and double checked in an effort to clarify some of the confusion and misinforma9on out there.
There are four stakeholders in the western nomenclature applied to Chinese hardwoods. They are: - the lumber trade involved in the distribu2on and retail of lumber and veneers for many purposes, - botanists who provide a scholarly approach to the unambiguous classifica2on and naming of the tree species that yield the wood we are seeking to iden2fy, - an2que dealers whose job is to create interest in fine objects and maximise their selling prices and finally, - the Chinese themselves who have created their own terminology and documented wood usage over centuries making it difficult to link these to the botanical names today.
For instance, ‘rosewood’ is a convenient catch all for an en9re family of woods coming from different genus of trees and from different parts of the world. Even when qualified with an adjec9ve, the terms ‘Indian rosewood’ and ‘Brazilian rosewood’ embrace families of tree species. How do they relate to the Chinese term ‘hongmu’ which is trending in western auc9on rooms and can be as confusing as ‘huanghuali’ or ‘zitan’, both of which terms command admira9on and high prices in part because of their mysterious meanings?
So this modest monograph is intended to offer the thoughts and accumulated knowledge of an enquiring mind curious to delve deeper into the terminology. But unlike databases of la9n tree names, I couple the tree with the wood with the beauty of the final appearance and also include a liOle of the associated history. The final act of wri9ng all this down has led me to some horrifying realisa9ons about the sustainability of these exo9c 9mbers and the lives that are lost in the quest to sa9sfy the hunger of collectors. As with climate change and global warming, we are reaching a 9pping point where en9re forests are being destroyed and the possibility of replacing them becomes difficult.
The purpose of this monograph is to shed a liOle light on all these aspects of wood, especially those na9ve to China or historically linked to that country. By doing so, we hope to add to the apprecia9on of the wood itself and thus s9mulate greater curiosity about it.
Glenn P. Wood York, PA, USA. January 2021.
