North American Burl Treen: Colonial & Native American by Steven S. Powers.

S. Scott Powers Antiques, 2005, 207 pp., hardbound, $125 (check or PayPal) from S. Scott Powers Antiques, 360 Court Street #28, Brooklyn, NY 11231; (718) 625-1715; Web site (www.burlsnuff.com); add $6.50 S/H, New York state residents add sales tax.

by Lita Solis-Cohen

For a decade Steven S. Powers has been selling American burl treen and snuffboxes at shows and on the Internet under the name S. Scott Powers Antiques. He is passionate in his pursuit of burl treen, and his enthusiasm comes through in his book. It is illustrated with fine color photographs of the many examples he has studied in private and museum collections, some of which he has owned or still owns.

Powers acknowledges that the practice of using wood for domestic purposes is as old as Europe itself, but he contends that Europeans did not commonly use burl until they became colonists in North America in the 17th century. They learned about burl from the Native Americans, who for centuries had used the knotty growth on trees with its interlocking grain for bowls, spoons, and ladles.

Europeans had used pole lathes for 2000 years before they brought them to America. Even the poorest peasants in Europe had turned ware; hand-hewn bowls, platters, and dishes were not a European tradition. Burl, however, was seldom used. Early accounts of explorers mention the artistry and value of Native American carved bowls and ladles, and in early wills and inventories a distinction was made between plain treen and burl treen, the latter called knot (or knott) bowls and dishes.

The Indians traded bowls as they traded baskets, although not much is known of the bowl trade. Powers believes that with very few exceptions turned burl bowls are of early American manufacture and that Native Americans made the hewn bowls. Native Americans used flint and other stone blades and beaver teeth as knives and axes. They cut a block of burl from a tree, burned the interior with hot coals, scraped, and burned some more until a cavity was formed. Then the bowl was shaped and refined with a combination of smaller stone implements and beaver teeth and burnished with a smooth stone or the back of a beaver tooth. In the 16th and 17th centuries Europeans brought the Native Americans metal tools, which were quickly favored over stone and tooth tools.

Powers tells us that the vast majority of burl treen in North America was made of black ash burl, about 3% to 5% of maple, and about 2% to 3% of elm. There is also cherry, white cedar, oak, and birch burl treen. Color photographs of the woods are worth a thousand words. Ash is shown with its cluster of dark eyes, similar to bird’s-eye maple but within a swirling grain. Powers warns that color depends on how the bowl was finished and how it was used. Maple burl has a more fluid figure, and the color of the figure can range from dark red-brown to lighter red. Maple burl is naturally waxy and can develop a high polish. Elm has concentric irregularly shaped circles that can look like a topographical map. It varies in color from ashen gray to darker brownish gray.

Treen is hard to date. The "best gauge for dating treen is dating it to like forms in other materials that have a known date," such as hallmarked pewter or silver. In his book Powers generally gives a 20-year window in dating objects.

Powers looks for untouched surfaces and regrets the old practice of waxing, oiling, and varnishing treen. As for fakes, he warns that Chinese and Tibetan turned burl objects are entering the market. He has also seen four fake American Indian effigy bowls in the last year.

According to Powers, burl treen has been covered "only incidentally" in antiques reference books. He mentions the "groundbreaking exhibit" in 1971 at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York, of the burl treen collection of DeVere Card, and he acknowledges the 30-page black-and-white catalog that accompanied the exhibit. Card, who died in 1980, is considered the father of burl treen collecting.

North American Burl Treen is a virtual burl treen exhibition without walls. The fine color photographs and descriptive captions provide a crash course in connoisseurship, with comparisons between objects, notes on finishes, and remarks on details such as telltale rasp marks on hewn bowls. Powers comments on aesthetic merit, rarity, and provenance of each piece illustrated. The provenance reveals who owns them now, who else has owned them, and where the good museum collections can be seen.

There are some surprising rarities, such as a burl maple queen bee box, a two-armed candleholder, burl knuckles, and a block and tackle. On the last page is a miniature stack of two books measuring just 1½" x 1 3/16".

Powers regards effigy bowls as important and profound carvings. "They were not common utilitarian receptacles for food service," he writes. Effigy bowls "were reserved for ceremonial feasts or medicine rituals." His tour starts with those made in the Northeast and progresses to the Great Lakes. He begins with a masterpiece of the Woodlands Indians, an ash burl effigy bowl purportedly made in Rhode Island. Now in the collection at Old Sturbridge Village, it was part of the collection amassed by Albert Wells over a short period in the 1930’s. The effigy bowl has an asymmetrical stepped monolith standing 4¼" above the edge of the bowl, with a creature crouching behind the castellation and peeking over it.

The book ends with a group of white cedar burl vessels with compass work designs from the Abenaki tribes of upper New England and eastern Canada. As an extra bonus he adds a few eastern Great Lakes maple root burl clubs and several carved heads.