Is black wood carving valuable for collection?

There is a kind of wood that can be said to be "fireproof and waterproof". It needs little water to grow and is safe in case of fire. This is African black wood. Black wood carvings carved from black wood carvings can be said to be the most distinctive handicrafts in Africa and the favorite of tourists from all over the world.

You hardly need water to survive.

Ebony, also known as ebony and ebony, is a semi-deciduous plant, and most of its leaves will fall off in the dry season. Its survival ability is extremely strong, it can adapt to all kinds of climatic environments, and even when the fire destroys grassland and other plants, they can be safe and sound. Blackwood is widely distributed in Africa, from northern Ethiopia to Angola in southern Africa, from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Tanzania in the Indian Ocean. There are traces of black wood from the dry and stony area at sea level to the plateau at an altitude of1200 m.

Blackwood hardly needs water to survive. In fact, once ebony has a perfect root system, it needs little or no rain to become wood. The bark of the log is dark gray, the inner cortex is yellow and white, and the core material is divided into four types: black, dark brown, purplish red and striped light brown. They grow slowly, growing once every five years. A tree with a diameter of about 10 cm needs to grow for more than 100 years. It is a very precious tree species.

Black wood carvings are valuable.

If you visit handicraft markets in many African countries, you will find black wood carving handicrafts. Vivid animals and people with different expressions, black wood has become the favorite of tourists all over the world after being processed by African craftsmen. Although black wood can be found almost everywhere in Africa, it is one of the rarest and most expensive wood in the world, and the most expensive wood can be sold for $25,000 per cubic meter. Not long ago, the reporter saw a pair of black wooden figures as high as 1.7 meters in Johannesburg, and the price was as high as $2,500.

In Africa, people prefer to carve black wood carvings into various tools, utensils, traditional carvings, and even the supporting structures of houses and indoor furniture. In Tanzania and the Marconde region of Mozambique, the local people regard black wood as a sacred and living plant. Maconde people are famous for their creative black wood carvings, which can be roughly divided into several categories, such as walking sticks, jewelry, tables, cabinets, bowls and other utensils, as well as statues such as cloud carvings, group carvings and elf monsters. Among them, the use of black wood carving elves and genies requires high talent, which is the essence of Marconde sculpture art and the most respected skill of artists and collectors all over the world. Jean Makoun people use black wood carvings to express their love, hate and faith. It can be said that black wood carvings contain their culture.

Mali people in Africa advocate black. They think that black wood is not deep enough. Therefore, every black wood carving work is painted with a layer of black paint, which is firmly attached in dry state, but soluble in water. Therefore, black wood carvings cannot be touched with wet hands or scrubbed with wet cloth.

Black wood boiled water to bathe the newborn.

Although not many people on other continents have really seen ebony, many people must have heard the sound of ebony instruments. Black wood is excellent in material, wear-resistant and non-decaying, so it is very suitable for carving complex musical instruments. When making woodwind instruments, it can show the specialty of black wood in sound production, so high-quality clarinets, bagpipes, piccolo and Scottish bagpipes are mostly made of black wood. It can be said that ebony has made the best woodwind instrument in the world.

In addition, black wood has many uses. Different parts of trees can be used to treat many diseases, and bark and leaves can be used as animal feed. Africans believe that the water boiled in black wood can bring strength to human beings, so the water boiled in black wood is often used to bathe newborns.

The particularity of ebony brings good luck as well as misfortune. It is estimated that woodwind instruments alone will cut down 7000 trees every year. Due to excessive logging, black wood in Kenya, southern Ethiopia and northern Tanzania has decreased sharply in the past 30 years.