Spruce Root

When I was up in the Eastern Cascades with a group of friends back in August I received some special pieces of wood to make spoons out of. One of these is a piece of alpine spruce root. When I carved into it the first time I was amazed to find many colors. Pink, green, and blue were mixed in with the light brown of this strong-smelling, pitchy root. As I continued to shape a spoon, I discovered that this root contained a whole rainbow of colors. They fade with time, and are hard to capture in photos, but you can imagine. What a pleasure to carve such beautiful wood!

It seems appropriate that this rainbow faceted root would be the spoon of the deep and magically dynamic song leader Laurence Cole. The bowl of this spoon is also very sturdy and deep, partly because I chose to leave a bit of the bark on the back side of the bowl. Another aspect of the spoon that seems fitting for Laurence is that rather than design the spoon in a symmetrical, measured way, I went with the flow of the contortions of the root fibers. hollows seemed to naturally form where a hand might hold it comfortably.