Created by Oxford artist, Peter Petrochko, the three laminated vessels were made from recycled
Chestnut lumber from the historic Quaker Farms section.
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| Peter Petrochko |
They are rare pieces because of their "one-of-a-kind shape" and because a fungal blight in the early part of the 20th Century wiped out most of these trees from our forests.
The species American Chestnut (Castanea dentata) was once a dominant species throughout much of the eastern half of the United States.
The nuts were a valuable food source, and the tannic acid in the wood was used for tanning leather. Also, the lumber had a wide variety of uses, for wood structures, fence posts, trim for houses, pulpwood and fuel.
For several decades, the American Chestnut Foundation and related organizations have been working on creating hybrid species, which have most of the characteristics of the original, but are bred to have a resistance to the fungal blight.
More information about this research can be found by contacting the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment
Station in New Haven.
Petrochko is a nationally acclaimed wood artist.
His work on wood is an outgrowth of studying architecture at the University of Cincinnati and Fine Arts at Silvermine College of Art.
While studying design, he became enthusiastic about making objects of wood and chose wood as his craft medium.
His current work focuses on one-of-a-kind wood vessels and sculpture. Some of his vessels are hand-carved while others are laminated. His laminated vessels utilize a "green technique" called "slip matching " wherein he is able to construct 3D forms from flat pieces of wood.
Using a bandsaw, he cuts a set of angular concentric rings off the edge of a flat board of a given shape. He then stacks and glues the rings together forming a rough 3D vessel. Since many of Petrochko's vessels are not round, much labor is involved in grinding and sanding these forms to create a smooth, finished surface.
His sculptural wood ranges from organic abstract carvings to abstract architectural constructions. These works range in style from elegant simplicity to more complex statements, displaying relationships between shape light, mass and space.
Petrochko's work is represented in numerous private collections including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Yale University Art Gallery, The Center for Art in Wood in Philadelphia and the White
House Permanent Collection of American Crafts.
This information is taken from a press release from Dorothy DeBisschop.
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