Every once in a while, you need to shake things up. People fall into habits, wear blinders on their eyes, and lose the broader perspective. This loss of perspective can sneak up on a wood carver easily. You are comfortable carving in one or two species and get flummoxed when you see work in something you are unfamiliar with. Staghorn sumac comes to mind. It’s a lovely and underappreciated wood with a yellowish-green to bronze-brown color when fully dry. In northeastern North America, you’ll see spindly stands of small trees or large shrubs along the roadside. In summer, it has bright red caps of fruit. If you’ve been in scouting, a survival course, or something like that, you’ll recognize the fruits as usable to make a beverage. It’s not exactly something you’d spot as a carving wood.
In 1969, I was in Ottawa, Ontario. While spending time with a First Nations friend, the subject of using Sumac came up. He wanted to show me the work of a friend who almost exclusively carved in Sumac. So we wandered over to Ron Campbell’s studio. Ron didn’t do just a token, one or two pieces in Sumac. He had an extensive collection of figures and torsos carved in it. Not erotic, but maybe the most sensuous carvings I had seen. Graceful curves and a deep, smooth finish made you want to stroke the carvings. The sweeps and curves were made more elegant by the variation in the colors of the wood, a striped bronze that curved and moved with grace.
I took some postcards of Ron’s carvings when I left Canada that fall. I can’t find them right now, but I used them when teaching woodcarving. Whenever a student claimed that you couldn’t use some tree’s wood for carving, I’d pull out the postcards and watch as their eyes took in the undulations and curves. I’d watch when they took the bait and asked me what the wood was. I’d tell them staghorn sumac and watch the disbelief in their eyes. Their eyes disbelieved it was Sumac, but their senses as carvers began to crave the wood that could produce such a sumptuous feast for the eyes.
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I recall a staghorn sumac a neighbor planted close to the property line that spread by roots(?) onto our side of the fence. I especially liked the fragrant “staghorns”, though I was unaware of what people used them for, if anything. Unfortunately, they are shallow-rooted and this favorite tree was blown over by a strong wind.
Your use of the wood for carving is another use I was unaware of. I like to think the wood of this tree has a spicey fragrance like the “staghorns”. Does it?
I’ve actually never used it. I’ve just pointed out to students that it is useable. Alder is another wood that is overlooked. It seems that only turners are aware that the pure white wood can be brilliantly marked by occasional straks of carmine. People just assume that the range of carvable woods is limited and it’s not.
My Native American California in-laws prefer smoking salmon fillets with alder wood, and when they bake salmon fillets over a beach fire pit, they skewer the fillets on alder stakes. It imparts an agreeable taste to the fillets, I can vouch from personal experience.