Yew

The Yew is a tree of sacred places, associated with churchyards and druid folk lore. It has it’s own totally unique growth pattern, often having a  trunk made of multiple cores and a hollow interior. Vertually all parts of the tree are poisonous, and working on it too much causes me to have a headache even with the best dust extraction.

I have to carve it in a completely different way from the other woods, but the result is a form much more characteristic of the tree itself.

The wood takes on a variety of colour, the sap wood is light, the heart wood starts as a light golden yellow, but develops darker reddish hues. Sometimes in freshly sawn wood there are patches of bright purple, but this pigment is prone to being oxidised by air and sunlight, taking on a dark maroon colour. It is also usually 'pippy', a term which is self evident when you look at the table tops below.