I am a lover of art and nature, being a young boy, when many
people were playing marbles or dragon ball cards in primary
school life, i was the one who keep interesting pieces of wood
or treasure in my bag. I love beautiful shape of wood, be it
agarwood or any other forms of natural wood. This could be
inspired by my father's collection of artisty wood in my house
since young.
Very often, if you are looking at collecting
beautiful shape or decorative agarwood, chances are you will
encountered many with "super glue" added to fix them. I am not
complaining that the "repairing" work done by the agarwood
workers or villagers are bad, in fact, many are hard to spot
until you try magnifying them or try burning the suspicious
spot. They are the experts in this skills as well.
Take
large ant hole agarwood for example, most of it are paste or
"repaired" by super glue, this is quite undestandable if you
really clean or crave out your own wood. Certain wood fibre are very
fragile and easily broken with a slightly wrong direction or strong
pressure applied to it, sometimes, while "chopping" or cleaning
out the white wood to "outline" the agarwood shape, you may
accidently damage the beautiful flows of resin lines underneath.
So with my own workers or partners, they know i am going to
crave my own wood out for certain beautiful piece of agarwood or
super resinated pieces, mainly to keep it as original as
possible and prevent any damages. Certain large pieces, it may
take weeks to curve out, due to the complexity.
For beginners, if you have access to unclean "agarwood ears"
type of agarwood, you can try craving them out and train your
skill. The agarwood ears will teach you how to "be light and
nice" in order to retain the shape :)
You can admire the
piece below for the different line of resin, apologies for the
watermark as i have seen many of my photos used among other
traders without my permission.
Special decoration Agarwood : Notice of how beautifully the
resin lines are and the texture. Can reader guess which type of
resin formation triggered this piece of art?
Sometimes, you may also encounter beautiful shape of
agarwood but with lower resin content, it may look yellowish
compare to darker grade agarwood.
Do note that if the
shape and price is good, it is ok to keep some just for
decoration purpose.
Agarwood for decoration photo number
2 : You can observe the artistic piece of agarwood below, from
cambodia origin, note that there are some broken holes at the
bottom part, the upper portion of the agarwood seems to be more
complete compare to the bottom.
I am also a fan of Brunei Agarwood, only a few manage to get
hold of the our limited edition super sinking bracelet and wood
in south east asia before all goes to China markets. See below
for my Brunei agarwood, with unique scent among the kalimantan
range.
Just like those super nice vintage agarwood, perhaps if you
are lucky, you can keep some natural shape of agarwood and
admire them at night like myself. After a day of hard work, i
would bring out some of my agarwood collection and recall the
memories of harvesting trip before i meet them and admire the
art of agarwood.