Mahogany

Also called: honduras mahogany, cuban mahogany, african mahogany, swietenia, khaya

Mahogany is a reddish-brown hardwood grown across the tropical Americas and West Africa, and for more than two centuries it has been one of the most sought-after woods for fine furniture and cabinet work. What the trade sells as 'mahogany', though, covers several distinct species, and not everything carrying the name is a true mahogany at all.

True mahogany and its lookalikes

True mahogany belongs to the genus Swietenia, native to the Americas, with Honduras and Cuba among its best-known named sources. A related African wood, from the genus Khaya, is sold as 'African mahogany' and used for much the same purposes, on the strength of a similar look and similar working properties. American mahogany's grain generally runs straighter than African mahogany's, though American logs still show a wide range of figure, the pattern left in the grain on a cut or planed surface. African mahogany, for its part, often has frequently interlocked grain, meaning the grain direction reverses between growth layers, and a texture running from medium to coarse, much like American mahogany's own. Not everything sold under a mahogany name is a mahogany at all. 'Borneo mahogany' was, in trade practice, the unrelated wood Poon, and 'Philippine mahogany' covered at least three separate species from the genera Shorea, Parashorea and Pentacme, none of them true mahogany. Cheaper substitute woods sold this way could usually be told apart on sight: they ran paler than the true wood and lacked its fine dark grain lines.

Grades within true mahogany

The trade also graded true mahogany by region. Victorian usage of the term 'Spanish mahogany' mainly meant Cuban mahogany, though it was occasionally stretched to cover more; that is a period usage, not a modern one. Honduras mahogany typically ran lighter in weight than Spanish, with a more open and irregular grain, though some pieces showed a fine golden colour with striking figure and veining.

Working the wood

Mahogany grows largely free of knots and warps less than most other timbers, which is why it suited nearly any joinery task set to it. That same stability, and its low shrinkage on drying, made it a favoured choice for founders' patterns, the wooden masters a foundry shapes a mould from, where holding an exact form mattered above everything else. As Holtzapffel put it in 1846: "Mahogany shrinks but little in drying, and twists and warps less than any other wood; on which account it is used for founders' patterns, and other works in which permanence of form is of primary importance." Beyond furniture and cabinet work, mahogany was also shaped on the lathe for turned work, and even a plain-figured veneer, lacking decorative figure, could match the quality of a good sheet of African mahogany or sapele, a related African hardwood, face veneer, the thin decorative layer glued to a panel's visible surface. Finishers colouring glue to match mahogany mixed in litharge of lead, a lead-oxide pigment; glue meant for mahogany or black walnut sometimes had a little powdered bichromate of potash worked in as well. Mahogany darkens noticeably, like cherry, after only a short spell of exposure to strong sunlight.

History and standing in the trade

Spanish shipbuilders used mahogany in place of oak for beams, planks and stanchions from the early colonial period into the 1700s, and figured pieces soon caught the eye of furniture makers. By the early 1700s mahogany had become a preferred wood for furniture and cabinetry, alongside satinwood, rosewood and ebony. Its reputation grew fast for a wood with such a short trade history: "Mahogany, which now seems indispensable to cabinet work, has only been in use a little over 150 years," Hasluck wrote in 1897. In one account of trade frequency, oak was used most often, followed by mahogany, then teak, then pitch pine.