Taking delivery of some of the Bruny Island collection I bought this week containing the historic Australian red cedar.
This week I took delivery of some beautiful, historic timber from a collection that has been put together on Bruny Island during the past 25 years.
In amongst it was a cache of Australian red cedar, a coastal rain forest timber that played a huge part in the early establishment of Australia, used for humble weatherboards through to grandiose interiors for banks and boardrooms, shipbuilding and furniture.
Known as Red Gold, the Australian red cedar was popular with the early settlers because it was light in weight, split true and easily, was robust and also reputedly had anti-termite qualities.
Its botanical name is toona ciliata and in the early days of white settlement trees as tall as 60m, with girths of 3m, were not uncommon. Within a century it had been virtually logged to extinction in the wild.
Plantation cedar is still available, but the farmed timber does not have the colour and character of that grown in the wild.
I am very excited about it and I am planning to create some new and elegant one-off furniture in coming months that I will unveil at the 2015 Sustainable Living Festival in Hobart from October 31-November1.
Cabinetmaker specialising in kitchens, bathrooms and anything made from timber.
Bernd Farasin 