Stanley Park Yew Burl Bowl

Stanley Park — the woodworker's collection

This wood came from the personal collection of a local woodworker who had done arborist work in Stanley Park. He saved pieces from trees that came down and kept them in his garage for over forty years. After he passed away, that collection came to me. The pieces include yew, cedar and maple burls. Each has its own grain and its own journey through the workshop, but they share this beginning.

Stanley Park Yew Burl

+1

This yew burl came from Stanley Park. A local woodworker saved it when he was doing arborist work in the park -- he kept the best of what came down rather than let it go. It sat in his garage for over forty years before it came to me. Yew is not common in a turner's workshop. The burl itself was dark and dense, almost prehistoric-looking from the outside. What it gives up on the inside is something else entirely -- a silky grain that catches light differently from every angle, warm and deep in a way that's hard to describe until you're holding it.

Stanley Park Yew Burl Bowl

+1

Yew has a quality that's difficult to put into words until you see it in the right light. The grain moves. Not literally -- but the figure shifts and shimmers as you turn the bowl, warm lines flowing into each other, the surface almost liquid. That quality, chatoyancy, is something yew does better than almost any other timber. The form is full and generous, taller than wide, shaped to keep the eye moving around the outside rather than stopping anywhere. The rim turns in just slightly at the top. It feels settled in the hand. Finished with pure polymerized linseed oil and beeswax. The oil deepened everything -- the warmth, the depth, the way the grain catches the light. Nothing more was needed.