Nick Stuart
I tried to explain my passion to a friend. Tunbridge ware ... treen ... wooden by- gones? But he did not know what I was talking about. So, here I go again. From the early 18th century, Tunbridge Wells was famous for its wooden trinkets sold to the fashionable visitors to its fashionable spa. In the 1830s, its craftsmen invented a unique form of wood mosaic decoration. Imagine a Penny Black: not a stamp but an exact representation in wood mosaic. They glued together the end grains of wafer-thin spills of natural woods — holly, yew, oak, furze, broom — to produce images and patterns of great subtlety. Sliced across the block, these mosaics were used as veneers to decorate boxes or turned on a lathe to produce stickware. Early designs were intricate geometric patterns; later, they became elaborate pictures of castles, birds, butterflies — all made up of tiny wooden tesserae. The craft spanned the Victorian age and then died. It was never revived. Now Tunbridge ware is for the collectors. The objects are beautiful to look at and to handle; plentiful enough to make collect- ing relatively inexpensive but with scope for 'discovering' rare pieces. And, since little is written on the subject the collector can quickly become an expert.
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