A History of Trees by Simon Wills

Author:Simon Wills
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NATURE / General
ISBN: 9781526701619
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2018-10-29T16:00:00+00:00

Lime wood is disinclined to split after being struck by, say, a spear, and tends to absorb the power of impact. It is also not too heavy. These were good properties for a shield.

Characteristic bright green leaves of the lime in spring.

Lime wood is light in colour, easy to work, and not liable to warp so in former times it was employed for a whole variety of roles other than shield-making. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it was widely taken up in the construction of items as diverse as domestic utensils, window lattices, chopping blocks, piano keys, ornamental boxes, architectural models and building templates, and ships’ pumps amongst many others. Given its general usefulness, the seventeenth-century author John Evelyn railed against the fact that lime wood was commonly imported into the UK from the Netherlands at great cost. ‘It is a shameful negligence,’ he said ‘that we are no better provided of nurseries of a tree so choice, and universally acceptable.’

The soft nature of lime wood, its uniform colour, and freedom from knots earned it the name of the ‘carver’s tree’, and with good reason. Lime has been widely used for carving figures, toys, statues, and bas-relief images, and in these roles it was rated superior to any other British native tree. One carver in particular brought the working of lime wood to an apex. His name was Grinling Gibbons, and during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries he became famous for creating the most elaborate and beautiful carvings from lime wood. Gibbons’ carvings still adorn the interior of St Paul’s Cathedral and several other London churches, as well as Kensington Palace, Trinity College Cambridge, Petworth House in Sussex, and many others. The intricacy of some of his work, created centuries before electric tools, must be seen to be believed.

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