Salvaged Chestnut Sculptural Wall Art

Dimensions: Width, 24.5 inches; Height 14.5 inches, Depth, 6 inches; the individual pieces of wood are about 2.4 inches thick; Weight 20 pounds. I call this abstract piece “Chestnut Peaks,” reflecting the wood type and the design resembling a mountain range. It’s one-of-a-kind and unlike anything I’d previously made. The rough, rustic surfaces and variable warm tones could make this a visually interesting focal piece in a variety of rooms. It doesn’t have D-rings attached to the back, because I feel this piece would look best hanging perfectly flat against the wall. Instead, it has two slightly angled holes drilled into the back that can accommodate strong nails or screws sticking out of a wall, 18 inches apart. Though, I suppose, someone might also like to display it flat on a tabletop. $150. Click here to purchase.

The Story

I was given a bunch of scrap wood by Alex Grabenstein, the proprietor of Vintage Lumber, in Woodsboro, Maryland, when I went there to buy a base for my “Disk Worlds” art project. When I described the kind of projects I like to make, he said maybe I could make something out of these scraps. Sure! They were the leftover bits from outside the perimeter of a large custom round table they were making for a client. All the wood is “wormy” chestnut. It is considered both rare and relatively valuable. Virtually all American Chestnut trees were killed by a parasitic fungus (the chestnut blight) in the early 1900s. The standing dead trees were subsequently damaged by insects, leaving holes and discoloration, and eventually harvested and converted into lumber. Virtually all the wormy chestnut lumber available today is salvaged from old barns and other structures. Many people like the rustic look that comes with the nail holes, discoloration, and worm/insect damage.

Given the shapes of the original pieces, I figured I could maximize my use of this raw material by cutting it into triangles. I cut as many right triangles as I could, making them as big as possible given the key limitation of the diameter of my miter saw blade. Most of the original pieces yielded just one triangle but a few yielded two. I got just over 30 triangles out of it, with very little scrap produced, and ended up using 25. I didn’t sand or do anything else with the wood; I left it looking rough and rustic, just like it was when I got it. But my creation process unintentionally introduced some extra character—specifically the circular marks left by my miter saw on the crosscuts.

I arranged the pieces in a series of adjacent rows, aiming to maximize variability in terms of size, shape, color, grain pattern, and little characteristics like nail holes. The only self-imposed “rules” I followed were, first, to have all the 90-degree angles pointing up, and second, to put the end-grain cross-cuts on the right side and the long-grain faces on the left side. This creates a degree of consistency but also makes the piece look very different when viewed from either side, an effect I really like, somewhat reminiscent of a lenticular image. I had to make several small trim cuts so all the pieces in a row would fit tightly together and form rows of equal lengths.

Once I knew the length and width of the planned arrangement, I cut a piece of ½-inch-thick medium density fiberboard (from The Home Depot) to those dimensions and painted the four edges with two coats of satin black paint. Then I glued down the chestnut pieces one row at a time. After it set, for extra security I put a wood screw through the back into the center of each of the 25 pieces. Finally, I measured for and drilled the holes that you can use to hang it on a wall.

Related Pieces: Abstract Upcycled Wood “Sculpture”, Large Abstract Reclaimed Wood “Sculpture”, One-Branch Three-Segment Wood “Sculpture”, Rough and Rustic Reclaimed Wood Stars #1 and #2, Rough and Rustic Square in Square.