In Ancient Egypt, sycamores were often planted near tombs and sarcophagi made of sycamore wood returned the dead to the womb of the mother tree goddess to nurture them through the life to death transition.

Sycamore tree is a member of the Earth’s oldest family of trees – found to be more than 100 million years old. In the Egyptian text, the Book of Dead there were two sycamore trees that stood at the eastern gate of Heaven. Between the trees, this is where the Sun God, Ra, showed himself each morning.

Spalting is any kind of wood coloration that is caused when fungi colonize the wood and extract nutrients from it, leaving behind dark dotted and lined patterns.

The term derives from the French word “chatoyer”, which means “to iridesce, like a cat’s eye.” If you’ve ever seen the stone tiger’s eye, you get the idea. In woodworking, chatoyance is a similarly striking optical quality in which areas of light and dark grain seemingly shimmer or shift depending on the angle of view.