Antique Drop-Side Table with Fiddleback Blackwood Top

• Blackwood - One of the best known and most widely used Australian timbers, blackwood (acacia melanoxylon), is a member of the Acacia (wattle) family and grows in eastern Australia from about Adelaide in South Australia, as far north as Cairns in Queensland.
  
  The largest, straightest and tallest trees come from the wet forest and swamps of north-west Tasmania where it is grown commercially.
  
  Blackwood timber colours range across a wide spectrum, from a very pale honey colour through to a dark chocolate with streaks of red tinge.
  
  The hardwood timber has been commonly used in the production of furniture, flooring, and musical instruments in Australia from the late 19th century. However, the straight grain timber is not the most prized or valuable, that honour falls to blackwood with a wavy, fiddleback pattern, which is used both in the solid and as a veneer. Fiddleback was only used on the finest examples of furniture.
• Fiddleback - A name given to the pattern of the grain in some timbers, where the lines of the grain are compressed and at the same time wavy. Fiddleback grain is prized as a timber for furniture and musical instruments, and is expensive becasue of its scarcity.
  
  In Australia fiddleback graining is found in blackwood. Other non-native timbers that are sometimes found with a fiddleback grain are mahogany and maple.
• Huon Pine - Named after the Frenchman who discovered the Huon River in Tasmania, it is an extremely slow growing and long living tree. Huon pine is native to Tasmania, and it can grow to an age of 3,000 years or more. The wood contains oil that retards the growth of fungi, hence its early popularity in ship-building in convict-era Tasmania. The timber is a warm yellow colour, finely grained, and was popular for household furniture in the Victorian era. Interestingly, much Huon pine furniture was made in South Australia. Huon pine is a protected species and only limited quantities are available nowadays, for craftsmen to manufacture small items such as platters, sculptures and other decorative objects.
• Cross Banding - A decorative veneer, up to about 2 cm wide, laid at right angles to the parallel grain of the main carcase, continuing around the edge of the piece, used around the edges of table tops, drawer fronts, tops of chests and desks, and sometimes on door frames. The cross band may be either in the same or contrasting timber to the carcase and the joint may be sometimes hidden by a line of stringing or herring-bone banding. Cross banding is found on furniture constructed both of solid and veneered timber. Where solid timber is used, a rebate will have to be cut to accommodate the cross band, so that the upper surface of the piece is flush. However, due to the natural shrinkage of timber over the years, the cross banding will have been pushed up in places, and the joint can be felt by the fingertips. If the cross banding is completely flush or even countersunk below the surface of the carcase and shows no other evidence of strain, it may very well have been a more recent addition.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• tables, purpose or type - drop-leaf / drop side 387