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Wedded Wood - Understanding the Story
The California native Walnut
Grown together to create something new
The California native Walnut
There are several varieties of black walnut used for grafting. They naturally produce a very hard, undesirable walnut. The wood of this black walnut is often richly colored and highly figured..
The European walnut
Grown together to create something new
The California native Walnut
The European walnut produces a beautiful, canopied tree with excellent nuts, but it does not thrive in California. Older varieties can also produce deeply figured, but lighter colored wood, that complement the black walnut.
Grown together to create something new
Grown together to create something new
Grown together to create something new
Over 100 years ago, Luther Burbank demonstrated a technique for grafting these two varieties together, resulting in a tree that is both beautiful and bountiful. It has been so successful that 400,000 California acres produce 99% of the nation's walnuts.
The story in the wood
Grown together to create something new
Wedded Wood™ products illustrate what happens as the original trees continue to grow according to their heritage while strongly merging at the graft. The visual result, inside the tree, are complex and beautiful patterns surrounding the graft line. The primary pattern that one sees, as the two trees mature together, arise from their different growth rates. Because the black walnut rootstock grows much faster than its European top, requires that each year's growth ring, must curve ever more horizontally to find their partner at the graft line.
Wedded Wood™ as a gift
Wedded Wood™ products are popular as gifts for new couples or as anniversary gifts. Each piece, by design, demonstrates the best aspects of a good union: together the individuals can achieve much more than they could do separately, that each continues to grow in a manner consistent with their own heritage, and that the visible bond between them celebrates the complexity, beauty and strength of that union.
Finding Wedded Wood™
The raw wood for making Wedded Wood™ products comes from the replacement of very old walnut orchards, originally planted with varieties that are now seldom used. For us, it is a treasure hunt, as we search for very old orchards that used varieties no longer planted, just as they are being removed. Quality requires that we gather the wood just the farmers are removing the trees. Because new varieties are much less figured, the potential supply of Wedded Wood™ is a diminishing every year.