Amongst some of the rarer and more beautifully marked woods, used in small quantities, are the following:—
- Mustaiba.
- Palmyra.
- Partridge Wood.
- Peruvian.
- Pheasant Wood.
- Purple Wood.
- Princes Wood.
- Rosetta.
- Snakewood.
- Yacca Wood.
TEAK is an extremely strong East India wood; there is also an African teak (Sierra Leone), called African oak.
SHISHAM or BLACKWOOD (Dalbergia Sps) is a heavy close-grained wood, dark brown in color, resembling ebony when polished, and is much used for furniture in India.
SANDAL WOOD, TEAK, MANGO WOOD.—Sir George Birdwood, in "Indian Arts," gives a complete list of these Indian woods, with their botanical names and other valuable information.
For a more complete list of the different woods used by cabinet makers, the reader is referred to Mr. J. Hungerford Pollen's "Introduction to the South Kensington Collection"; to many of these he has been able, after much research, to give their botanical names, a task rendered somewhat difficult owing to the popular name of the wood being derived from some peculiar marking or colouring but giving no clue to its botanical status. Amongst these are tulip wood, rose wood, king wood, pheasant wood, partridge wood, and snake wood. It is worthy of remark that, whereas in England the terms "king wood" and "tulip wood" represent the former, a wood of rich dark reddish-brown color, or "purple madder," and the latter one of a yellowish-red, prettily-streaked, in France these terms have exactly the reverse equivalents. These were very favourite veneers in the best French marqueterie furniture described in Chapter VI., and are frequently found, the one as bordering to relieve the panel or drawer front of the other.
In the Museum at Kew Gardens, and also in the Colonial Galleries of the Imperial Institute, are excellent collections of many rare woods well worth examination.
Some particulars of the different woods mentioned in the Bible, from which examples of Ancient Furniture were manufactured, and to which reference has been made in Chapter I.
These notes have been kindly supplied by Dr. Edward Clapton, whose collection of specimens of these scarce woods is of great interest.
SHITTIM WOOD is the wood of the Shittah tree, or Acacia Seyal. This spiny tree especially abounded in the peninsula of Sinai and around the Dead Sea, but was also found in various parts of Syria, Arabia, and Africa. In the present day the shittah trees are very few and small, but in the time of Moses there were forests of them, and of a size sufficient to form long and wide planks. It is, as Jerome says, "a very strong wood of incredible lightness and beauty," and, he adds, "it is not subject to decay." This corresponds to the translation of the Hebrew term for shittim wood in the Septuagint, which is "incorruptible wood." Though light, it is hard, strong, and durable. As a proof of this, the Ark, and other furniture of the Tabernacle, which were made of shittim wood, must have lasted for a period of some 500 years before all traces of them were lost. Dean Stanley remarks that the plural word shittim was given to the wood of the shittah tree from the tangled thickets into which the stems of the trees expand.