Box

Box is an unusual wood; it is very dense, hard, and fine grained.  So the wood of the mature tree - or its roots - is excellent for wood engraving, making precise, robust mathematical instruments and the like.  Of course, immature, clipped and managed trees are common in topiary, in which the wildness and toughness of the tree is lost completely.  The wood is so dense that it sinks in water, the only European wood with this characteristic.

I recently bought an engraving by Howard Phipps at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, printed from boxwood.  The engraving is only 8" x 6" or so (an engraving is made on the surface exposed when the wood is cut at right angles to the grain, so only small pieces are available - but the fineness and toughness of the wood allows great precision in the work - the detail to the left is about life size).  It is called Melbury Beacon and has a lovely eighteenth century feel to it, shades almost of Samuel Palmer.

Chiswick House, which I wrote posted on briefly a few days ago, has some simple box hedges in one of the formal gardens, but I could not get a really good photograph of a wild, gnarled, slightly tortured box tree - though one can see them easily enough in parts of southern England, notably Box Hill in Surrey.

And, to follow my habit and joy, now to finish with something completely irrelevant: boxty is an Irish word, for a bread made of raw grated potatoes and flour.

Comments

[Equiano]

Isn't Howard Phipps marvellous?! I am a great fan of block prints and wood engravings - there's something about the texture of the finished pieces on lovely paper that feels immensely satisfying to me. And then there's the fact that as a form of illustration they are often perfect for books.

[lindsay]

Certainly cherry is sometimes used.

[Peter the flautist]

Intrigued by the comment on the density of box (Dark Puss has a number of wood engraving blocks by the bird illustrator G E Lodge) I thought you might find this table of wood densities interesting (http://www.csudh.edu/oliver/chemdata/woods.htm). I thought that some of the trees of the Rosacea family have also been used in Europe for wood engraving blocks: apple, pear, cherry, but maybe these are only ever used for wood cuts.
Dark Puss has just noted that the Primrose Hill Press (apparently NOT near to me) has some books on felines with rather splendid engravings!