How do we spalt our wood?

Spalted wood is beautiful. It is one of those processes that occur in nature that we can imitated at best but never re-created. Mother nature is the ultimate artist in this case, and while we use the beauty that she creates we can never truly control it. We’re just along for the ride.

When a tree dies or has otherwise been stressed, it becomes vulnerable to fungi ready to consume it. The fungi infiltrate the wood in waves of primary and secondary colonizers. The first wave captures and controls the wood’s resources even changing the structure of the wood. This first wave of invading fungi then has to defend against the second wave of colonizers. What we see as beautiful lines in the wood are actually boundaries drawn by different fungal colonies defending their territory. These fungal boundaries are the reason that there is no regular pattern or logic to designs, unlike features such as a tree’s growth rings or grain.

Our approach to spalting has mostly been one of joy and discovery and a touch of procrastination. We let our wood age outside and don’t try to reduce any fungal influences on the trees. We love when we find natural spalting in trees that we take down on our property, our friends property, or even the occasional road-side, wood-side find. Mostly though, we just love the beauty of the wood and we don’t do much to get in the way of that beauty.