Tulipwood - today and 50 years ago...

Only very rarely will you be lucky enough to find and be able to buy a really old stock of brazilian tulipwood that has now become quite rare. In this case, we were lucky enough to be able to buy a very special, truly ancient half-trunk from the dark depths of an old timber merchant alongside some other, quite young, beautiful pieces of tulipwood (Dalbergia decipularis): the trunk has absolute veneer quality, is very fine and evenly grained and has the much sought-after deep red intense color, with virtually no defects such as rotten spots or large cracks on the trunk, and it betrays its age by the way the raw trunk was processed with an adze in the forest after felling. Such valuable timber must be cut into clean lengths immediately after felling, and in order to prevent the expensive wood from cracking, these logs are usually split or sawn in half on the felling site, and then the most important thing of all takes place: all sapwood must be finely and carefully removed from the heartwood.
The sapwood has a completely different density and, if it were to remain on the trunk, its completely different shrinkage behavior would certainly cause it to tear the heartwood deeply during drying. A long time ago, therefore, such sapwood layers, which can be several centimeters thick in tulipwood, were carefully and conscientiously removed by hand with an adze or crosscut axe. This half-trunk shows exactly such traces of an adze; the typical, slightly rounded blade of this tool has left characteristic marks on the block, and this is probably one of the reasons why this piece has nearly no cracks. The second, adjacent half log is significantly younger, its sapwood has been roughly removed with three saw cuts, and so this log also has several cracks in its heartwood. The most difficult question is now: is it allowed to saw up such a special piece of rosewood just like that? And what's more, can it be scattered all over the world in small pieces by selling it in our store? As always, a decision is very difficult for the owner, and it will certainly take quite a while before there is a clear decision on this matter...