The Excellence of Yamazakura: Mountain Cherries and the Disappearing Tradition of Ukiyo-e Craft

Cherry blossom, sakura, is one of the visual symbols of Japan. For Japanese people it represents the beauty and fragility of life. Cherry tree belongs to the Rose family, which includes nearly 3000 different sub-species of flowering plants. Prunus serrulata, sometimes called as Oriental Cherry, is a species native to Japan, Korea and China. In Japan, cherry trees are roughly divided in yamazakura, wild mountain cherries and satozakura, cultivated cherry trees growing in residential areas. Moilanen’s research concentrates on the special properties of yamazakura, and its use in manufacturing printing blocks for traditional ukiyo-e woodblock prints. The unique craft of ukiyo-e is gradually fading into history due to lack of successors. Difficulties in finding proper yamazakura wood material for making the printing blocks add to the problem. Moilanen gives an overview to the art of ukiyo-e and the present day situation in printing block manufacturing. Her article also includes an introduction of other wood qualities used in Japan for printmaking and a short report about a Finnish attempt for finding an alternative wood material to yamazakura. Research on heat-treated alder and birch was conducted in Aalto University in Helsinki 2008–2012. Finally, the current state of yamazakura in Japan is estimated, and the future prospects of ukiyo-e printmaking.

Tracing the Historical Culture of Spalting in Spain to Its Potential Influence on Peru

In Europe, from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, intarsia and marquetry woodworks relied heavily on the use of spalted wood (wood colored by fungi) especially the blue-green stained wood from the Chlorociboria species. Although the use of spalted wood is well documented in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and England, little is known about how guild traditions migrated from Spain during European colonization. This research sought to determine if the techniques or woodworks of the time moved to the viceroyalty of Peru. While numerous examples of spalted marquetry have previously been found in Spain, all were made by German artisans and imported to the country. For this research, only one piece of spalted furniture was found in Peru, and it was of English origin. Noting Spain’s lack of production of spalted woodworks and the few pieces found in Peru, it is likely that this niche product did not move to Peru with Spanish colonists and may have instead come over later with English colonists in the 1800s when spalted wood was popular in that region.

Wood Identification of Ancient Temple Structures in Ladakh, Located in the Western Himalayas

Microscopic wood identifications were performed on five Buddhist temple structures, three vernacular houses, two stupas, and two holy trees located in Ladakh, a region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir in the Western Himalayas. Leh is Ladakh’s capital and is located along the Indus River, the backbone of Ladakh. The vernacular buildings, stupa, and holy trees are located in Leh. Ladakh is a high-altitude desert with extremely scarce vegetation. Natural vegetation occurs mostly along the watercourses. The temples are located in villages along the upper Indus river valley, or along confluent rivers. From the 110 wood samples, 4 wood species were identified: poplar, willow, juniper, and pine. Building type, local availability, specific physical and mechanical properties of the wood species, and religious considerations were apparently the leading criteria for timber selection.

Austrian Logging: A Historical Account of the Time of Felling and Debarking, and Transportation Practices

Wood in Austria has been an indispensable source of energy, but also, a crucial building material. In the field of dendroarchaeology the timeline between raw material harvest and finalisation of a wooden construction is a crucial piece of puzzle in understanding building history. This paper aims to provide an overview on historical timber supply in Austria by examining the felling and debarking methods, as recorded in old literature and, from the visible evidence on beams in wooden constructions. Historically, depending on the size and location of a building, a small or extended supply chain of timber was required. These generally consisted of logs travelling via streams and rivers, and possibly beforehand passing through sluices and log slides, being skidded by horses and oxen, and being moved by manpower on sleighs, or simply on the forest floor. The seasonal working steps of the logging process included felling, debranching, debarking, cutting to length, and the start of the transportation process. Debarking was a specific focus in this investigation, as the appearance of bast (the inner bark of trees from which ropes were made) or even bark residues on the waney edge (outermost growth ring underneath the bark), may provide a clue to the felling time of year. These indications of the cutting season have been noticed during dendrochronological sampling of beams in historical buildings. Improved knowledge of them may contribute to future research of these buildings.

Log Transport in the Limestone Alps, Austria: Where Did the Timber Go?

Wood is one of the most important sustainable natural resources. Throughout centuries, large cities as well as regions of very high wood demand (for example, areas of salt production and iron processing) had to be supplied with wood for building and burning. One of the largest forests in Austria can be found in the National Park covering the range of mountains called “Limestone Alps.” Within this region, a wide network of dams was set up to transport single logs (“Holztrift”). Due to the dendrochronological dating of the surviving dams, regional chronologies spanning a length of almost 600 years for Norway spruce, Silver fir and European larch were set up. These chronologies serve as the background for dendro-provenancing timber. Dendro-provenancing checks the similarities between samples and different regional chronologies. The highest statistical figures give hints of the origins of the wood. Archival analyses show that many logs were transported to Vienna as rafts. For example, in 1865, more than 1504 rafts arrived in Vienna, all from different origins. The logs were used as building material as well as for burning. Further archival analyses showed that logs from this region were also used for building the roof of the Hofburg Castle in Vienna. Several hundred samples from the roof construction were dendrochronologically dated and used for dendro-provenancing. The origin of the logs was confirmed to be the wider region of the Northern alpine foothills. This meant that rafts from the rivers Alm and Traun as well as from the rivers Steyr and Enns had floated down to Vienna.

Can We Estimate Felling Intervals for Barrels without Sapwood?

Oak barrels are a common find in excavations in the Netherlands. Despite the availability of numerous dendrochronological samples (staves) for each barrel, sapwood is often absent; this limits the usefulness of dendrochronology for the interpretation of the context because only the earliest possible felling date can be given. When there is no sapwood present on any staves, a close grouping of dates for the outermost rings suggests that this marks the transition from heartwood to sapwood (the heartwood–sapwood transition). If the presence of the heartwood–sapwood transition can be determined, a more accurate felling interval can be established. Historical sources on the production of staves refer to a consistent production, whereby the sapwood and as little heartwood as possible was removed. To determine whether dendrochronological dates consistently group near the heartwood–sapwood transition, an objective and repeatable methodology was used to avoid relying on personal estimates. The dendrochronological data shows evidence for a consistent stave production process. This does not apply to all cases. In some cases, the results are unconvincing, while evidence for the absence of consistent production was also found. This is not a universally applicable method, but it can provide accurate felling intervals for a number of barrels, despite the absence of sapwood.

Relationship between Wood Traits and Sound Frequency at Different Pitch Levels of Talking Drums (Gangan) Manufactured from Aningeria robusta Wood

Wood is a unique material for making musical instruments and is used to make West African talking drums, whose pitch can be regulated depending upon how the player strikes the head of drum and changes its tension. Additionally, talking drum manufacturers have certain wood preferences, and in the absence of preferred species, they use supposedly unsuitable woods. Therefore, there is a need to examine wood traits in relation to the pitch of a talking drum. This study was designed to determine the existing relationship between selected wood traits and the frequency of talking drums made from A. robusta wood. Three A. robusta trees were obtained from Onigambari Forest Reserve. From each tree, three bolts of 50 cm in length were obtained from the base, middle, and top of the tree to determine selected properties (moisture content (MC), wood basic density (WBD), modulus of elasticity (MOE), modulus of rupture (MOR), and manufacturing of talking drums). A spectrum analyzer was used to analyze the sound frequency of the talking drums at three pitch levels (high, medium, low). A completely randomized block design was used and the data obtained was analyzed using descriptive statistics, ANOVA, and correlation analyses at α 0.05. Sound frequency was not significant along sampling height, but was significant at pitch levels. Additionally, the correlation analysis between wood traits and sound frequency was not significant. Thus, wood cannot be recommended for talking drums’ optimal acoustic performance based on wood traits alone.

Transportation of Wood Out of the Forest (along Short Distances)

Over thousands of years, man could achieve movement only through muscle power, running water, or with the help of gravity. Transportation was achieved using moving human, animal, or mechanical power. The massive weight of wood and the extensive distances between forest and consumer raised immense problems and were a challenge to the people involved in wood transportation. To facilitate this dangerous and hard labor, wood workers developed various permanent or temporary constructions, which were adapted to their respective local conditions. Over time these have been transformed according to developing technical standards, but they did not change remarkably until the introduction of steam and fossil fuels in the second half of the 19th century. Especially in mountainous regions, forestry was and is dependent on a particularly skilled transportation system. This study examines what locally-adapted technologies were used throughout history to meet the large demand for wood from industry, trade, and the general population, and the kind of organization and planning that was applied. This work focuses on skidding wood out of the forest over short distances, either directly to consumers or to a collection point, from which the transport of large quantities of wood over longer distances started.

Traces of Transport at the Vienna Hofburg Roof Constructions

The Vienna Hofburg is a large complex of buildings of unique historic importance with historical wooden constructions from the 13th to the 20th century. Within its wooden roof constructions, rafting wedges were found, which proves that the timber used did not originate in the surroundings of Vienna but had to be transported to the city. An ascertainment of these residual traces in eleven wings of the Hofburg building was made; five different types (within two main groups) of rafting wedges and withies (softened twigs that can be used like short ropes to tie trunks together) were defined: (1) simple flat wedges, driven into the fresh wood; (2) round or squared wedges, with or without withies driven into bored wholes. It was not possible to trace back the origin of the construction timber by means of that typology. However, the combination of dendroprovenancing and historic records found in archives led to first results.