Colour Collaborative: November: Wood

Wood is such a fundamental part of our homes and lives, even in this age of modern fabricated materials. Despite man's synthetic inventions, there is nothing which comes close to the beauty, usefulness and versatility of wood.

There is a colour of wood to suit everyone, from the palest maple and light oak through the warm middle ranges of cherry and hickory to heavy dark walnuts and the pitch black of ebony. Every wood has its own qualities. Soft pine for simple furniture. The exquisite distortions of burrs, polished into table tops. Durable oak, lasting for centuries as building timber.

Around the house I have an eclectic mix of light and dark, old and new, practical and pretty. My old piano, bashed by children and nibbled by that enemy of all things wood, the woodworm.

The sun has faded it in places, but the wood still holds a soft beauty, from its paler tan sides to its rich cherry lid.

A chopping board, bleached and scarred over time. The natural antibacterial properties of wood make it perfect for use in the kitchen. I'd never swap it for a manmade material, the wood is perfect.

Knitting needles, warm and smooth and quietly clicking. I love the feel of a natural material in my hands while I work. Why oh why do they make plastic needles for children? I always think children should have nice tools to start with, to inspire them.

An old table, bought years ago from a shop in Tetbury. Nothing flash; scarred and pitted. But a practical thing, that one day could be just returned to nature when its days of usefulness end. That is the main beauty of wood, that it is part of the environment. There don't need to be any harmful contaminating processes in its production or finishing, and it need never end up in landfill. The growing of trees is about as sustainable as it gets.

And in almost every room here, wooden bookcases. Somewhere for all those stories to live, while they're waiting for someone to escape into them. Somewhere for a plant to grow or a candle to flicker. And while the small people are at school, it's somewhere for a bear to take a rest.

Wishing my American friends a very happy Thanksgiving, I hope you have a lovely day.

To visit the other Colour Collaborative blogs for more of this month's posts, just click on the links below:

         Annie at Annie Cholewa                                  Gillian at Tales from a Happy House

         Jennifer at Thistlebear                                      Sarah at Mitenska

         Sandra at Cherry Heart

What is The Colour Collaborative?

All creative bloggers make stuff, gather stuff, shape stuff, and share stuff. Mostly they work on their own, but what happens when a group of them work together? Is a creative collaboration greater than the sum of its parts? We think so and we hope you will too. We'll each be offering our own monthly take on a colour related theme, and hoping that in combination our ideas will encourage us, and perhaps you, to think about colour in new ways.