Holly

Also called: ilex

Holly is a hardwood valued for the opposite of most timber's virtues: not colour or figure, but the absence of them. Its many species grow worldwide, but the wood prized in the trade is fine-grained, clean, and at its best, pure white.

Character and preparation

Holly's sapwood, the pale outer wood of a growing tree, runs very wide and is usually paler still than the heartwood within. Holtzapffel (1846) called it "the whitest and most costly of those used by the Tunbridge-ware manufacturer," Tunbridge ware being the craft of setting small pieces of wood into mosaic-like inlay, which employed holly "for a variety of his best works, especially those which are to be painted in water colours." Because the pale wood discolours easily, it is best cut in winter so it stays white, and though it is usually whitened by a separate preparation, Holtzapffel noted that "a good boil hastens the extraction of the sap, and the subsequent seasoning of the wood," sparing that step. Holly also takes stain and polish well, and can be dyed to resemble blackwood.

Working and small work

Described as a remarkably tough, clean wood, holly was used for chucks, the fittings that grip a piece of work in a lathe. Its logs run small, and one Tunbridge-ware account notes that a softer timber was preferred over holly for large painted or varnished pieces "on account of its greatly superior size." Engravers also worked holly, notably for the printing blocks used in calico-printing, the trade of printing patterns onto cotton cloth, and small holly timber went into whip handles.

Inlay and cabinet work

Holly is well suited to inlay work, and its veneer went into Tunbridge-ware mosaic inlay as well as pale or dyed stringing lines, thin strips of contrasting wood let into a surface, set into furniture and cabinet pieces. Alongside boxwood and pearwood dyed to imitate blackwood, it served as inlay lines and stringing set off by insets of bone, ivory, tortoiseshell, mother-of-pearl, pewter and brass. Jones (1920) judged that although oak was the better material functionally for a nest of pigeon-holes, "the nest of pigeon-holes would look better in satinwood or holly," and gives an example of pigeon-holes and their small drawers cut from thin sheets of oak, satinwood or holly.