The Weeks Rocking Chair in Special Editions

From time to time we build rocking chairs with unusual woods or in a mix of woods, and display them in the showroom and on this page.  These individuals may be built of:

• curly cherry
  
• curly maple
• cherry with birdseye maple splats and accents
• walnut with cherry splats and accents
• cherry with an interesting match of sapwood and heartwood
• walnut with an interesting match of sapwood and heartwood
• burly mesquite
• Texas pecan
• any species of interest that is available
• wild mixes of woods, two or three species in a chair

We also build rockers in woods or mixes of woods of our patrons' specification.  These have included:

• koa and other exotics
  
• specified mixes of woods
• wood from trees on family land

Special Edition Rocking Chairs are priced according to time, trouble, expense, and degree of distinction.

Curly Maple Rocking Chairs

"Curly" wood is the result of an anomaly of growth that occasionally occurs in trees.  In a tree producing curly wood, the grain does not grow straight from root to crown  (as it more or less does in normal tree) but rather propagates in semi-regular waves, with amplitude and frequency of approximately 3/8".  When the wood is worked and finished, light hitting the surface is reflected differently by the highs and lows of these waves of grain, creating a distinctive pattern and appeal.

Curly maple is also called Tiger maple and Fiddleback maple, "Tiger" because of its velvety and almost iridescent striping, "Fiddleback" because it is often used on the backs of stringed instruments for its eye-catching figure.  I have admired furniture made of curly maple but until the Spring of ’04 had not ordered any to work.  When Randy at Kane Hardwoods said that they could select and deliver certified curly maple to us with our orders of cherry and regular maple, I knew I had better try it.

When the curly maple came, it looked good in the board, but we don’t really know what we have until the oil goes on the sanded surface.  When we got a chair together, we gathered round to see what the oil would reveal.  The oil did not reveal so much as ignite.  We cheered.

[ Large-format photo   This is a large, full-screen image of the above photo, and will take some time to load with a dial-up connection.  However, it is well worth the wait. ]

The energetic leaping of the figure and character of this wood brought "Tiger Maple Weeks Rocker" to mind.  Like a tiger in the house, one of these chairs will not go unnoticed.  (They are loveable and will let you pet them however.)

Weeks Rocking Chair in Curly Maple
Or
The Tiger Maple Weeks Rocker$3000

(Certified by the Forest Stewardship Council)