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Oak

A hard, coarse-grained, dense timber distinguished by its flecks (rays) which is light browny-yellow when cut. Oak is a slow growing tree taking between 150 and 200 years to reach maturity. The wood is hard and pale in colour but darkens to a rich brown with age and polishing. This hard, strong timber is available in good plank widths and used throughout history in both Europe and America. Usually identifiable by the medullary rays that can be accentuated by the way it is cut. It is resistant to woodworm due to the tannic acids it contains, which hardens it. An oak beam from an old house, covered in woodworm on the surface, is invariably sound in the centre. Furniture made from oak is usually heavy and solid and simple in design. From the mid 1600´s oak was used mainly for the carcasses of furniture and draw linings but became popular again in the late 1800´s with the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Early Oak – before mid 1600´s – used in solid, has become usually very dark or plain brown colour.

Later country oak furniture – of the 1700´s – tends to be lighter and the distinctive wormlike yellow rays are more visible. In fine furniture of late 1600´s and 1700´s, oak was used for drawer linings in plain sawn form, and especially in liner drawers remains light in colour. Also used in veneer form.

* Provincial oak furniture is often very red in colour owing to staining with “dragons blood”

* Employed in the solid since the Middle Ages, and constantly popular in the provincial tradition

* Increasingly used as a carcass wood on more sophisticated furniture from the 1600´s

* Brown or “pollard” oak, a richly figured burr with a broken surface fashionable as a veneer from the early 1800´s