OK smarty pants, these are all antique or vintage woods from Hudson Valley's Antique & Vintage Woods of America (no peeking at the site!) It's a Friday pop-quiz! Can you name that wood?
Name That Wood!
How did you do? Tell us in the comments!
FIRST ROW
• 1 Vintage American Elm, a hardwood. Unfortunately Elm tree have been ravaged by Dutch Elm disease.
• 2 Antique Rustic Douglas Fir, classified as a softwood but can be used for flooring. 200 years ago, Douglas Fir was the choice for flooring in the Northwest.
• 3 Antique Mushroom Wood, was used in mushroom farms in western New York state and Pennsylvania. The wood was cut mostly from Hemlock and Cypress trees, and was used as shelving for mushroom beds. The mushrooms would produce an enzyme that eats away the soft portion of the wood, leaving the weathered honey color.
• 4 Vintage Spruce, a light-colored softwood that grows along the northern Pacific Coast.
• 5 Vintage American Cherry
SECOND ROW
• 6 Antique Tobacco Barn Oak, Its name refers to its use, more than 100 years ago, as tobacco barn siding in Connecticut and in the southern U.S.
• 7 Antique Heart Pine, used in excess to build American factories in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Heart Pine, now scarce, only grows an inch in diameter every 30 years.
• 8 Vintage Old Growth Walnut, walnut was the wood of choice for 17th century cabinetmakers in Europe.
(All descriptions and wood names are taken from Antique & Vintage Woods of America)
site found via Deluxa
Comments (9)
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These are lovely woods -
It might have been interesting/fun to run a series of these as quizzes that we could have posted answers to and learned our answers later...
view bepsf's profile
wow, i didn't get a single one right ahah. i spend too much time looking at the color, and not enough time thinking about its grain.
view kdkaboom's profile
Tobacco barn wood! Anyone else grow up surrounded by Connecticut's tobacco barns? If most of the barns are oak, no wonder no one can afford to restore them. (And I guess they're not as scenic as classic dairy barns.)
view Liana's profile
Don't know the answer...however, a wonderful book on this topic, with plenty of historical tidbits, is "A Reverence For Wood" By Eric Sloane. Great gift for your fave carpenter/historian.
view travlingal's profile
i failed that test miserably. i'd never even heard of mushroom wood!
view thegeneral's profile
"i'd never even heard of mushroom wood!"
That's because there's no such thing.
It's Hemlock and Cypress that was used as beds to grow mushrooms.
view bepsf's profile
Liana, I know of a few tobacco barns in CT. Surprisingly, tobacco is one of CT's biggest crops. I believe it's used primarily for cigar wrappers.
There is a complex of antique, but still working, tobacco barns visible on the approach to Bradley International Airport. And, there's an antique tobacco barn on Route 63 south of Litchfield.
view Doug's profile
Douglas Fir is still used everywhere in BC! I have Fir floors and absolutely love them.
view Ginna_D's profile
Only two. But I don't like antiques, so I might do better with new samples. (Or not!)
view SherryBinNH's profile