Akacio veneer is a little-known treasure from Central and South America. It has a lovely honey color, tan to brown lines, straight grain, and a medium texture. Against a fairly uniform background, this specie can produce a range of beautiful figures, including curly and fiddleback figures reminiscent of anegre or maple, and is an excellent, adaptable choice for a wide range of interior styles.
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Alder is a warm honey-red colored wood with a beautiful, subtle grain interspersed with fine lines and flecks produced by the tree’s annual growth rings. Domestic alder grows in a mile mile wide coastal strip along the Pacific coast from Canada almost to Mexico; European alder along. The wood darkens to a warm reddish-brown color after being felled. Natural markings including pithy flecks and streaks add to the singular character to this wood.
Amboyna burl is among the world’s rarest and most expensive veneers—holding the distinction of being the original wood used on Rolls Royce dashboards. Leafs are small in dimension due to the small size of the burl. Deep yellow-orange to red, amboina burl has an unsurpassed depth and beauty prized in high quality architectural woodwork and cabinetry.
Red birch is not actually a specie—but is rather veneer cut from the darker heartwood of the yellow birch tree. Rich reddish-brown in color (the sapwood is almost pure white), this veneer is a fine, versatile, and popular choice in architectural interiors. When figured, it typically presents a curly or mottle figure. Its smooth surface makes it well suited for applying stains and glossy finishes.
Thousands of centuries ago, Lebanese cedar was one of the world’s most precious woods, used in the construction of ancient temples and palaces. Today, this beautiful, decorative wood is now primarily grown in England and France. Rare and highly prized, most logs are produced by local European veneer merchants with local knowledge of the availability of this exceptional veneer.
Also known as juniper, the aromatic red cedar veneer tends to be a reddish or violet-brown with a pale yellow sapwood. A relatively small tree, the veneer produced typically includes copious knot marks. Red cedar stands are found in scattered locations over the eastern half of North America and their veneer is well suited to naturalistic and rustic interiors.
Red elm has a lively, decorative grain and a pale reddish-brown color interspersed with lovely light effects that result from wood’s medullary rays. Found primarily around the Great Lakes region, (and commonly referred to as slippery elm in tree form) this elegant domestic is a hardy survivor of the Dutch elm disease that wiped out millions of elms worldwide.
Gaboon is an elegant African wood with a lustrous, natural sheen. It ranges in color from pale pink to reddish brown and when quarter cut it often produces a beautiful broken stripe or rope figure. This moderately priced veneer comes in logs well sized for larger architectural projects; figured logs fetch higher prices.
The largest of the hemlocks, this hemlock grows over 300’ tall from the Rockies to the Pacific coast. It has a straight grain, tightly spaced growth rings, somewhat course texture, and flat, uniform appearance with little distinction between the heartwood and sapwood. Hemlock takes finishing well and can be stained in virtually any color, making it an adaptable wood for interior projects.
One of the hardest woods in the world, ipé is found throughout Central and South America, although most commercial wood comes from Brazil. White the tree itself is large, defect-free sections for veneer are relatively small. Extremely dark, the colors can vary from reddish-brown to green-black with subtle but distinctive stripes. Flat cut veneer produces the characteristic cathedral grain. Quartered, it can produce a plain or broken stripe figure.
This tropical evergreen grows to impressive heights in consistently cylindrical trunks, making it ideal for veneer production for architectural use. It has an intense, warm, reddish-brown color—much like cherry—with contrasting occasional gray-brown streaks. Jatoba has a medium texture, interlocked grain, and very desirable natural luster.
Very little veneer is produced from the trunk, but large growths at the base of the madrona produce this remarkable burl veneer. In what some believe looks like an overhead view of a hilly landscape intertwined with waterways of swirly grain, this warm, inviting, and choice veneer is highly sought after for high-end architectural installations and custom millwork.
Artists and designers alike appreciate the elegant lines of this lighter alternative to African mahogany. It’s lighter in color, firmer in texture, and straighter in grain than its African counterpart. Among the finest woods in the world, this is a versatile and adaptable choice for architectural interiors.
English brown oak isn’t actually a separate species; rather it’s the result of a fungus that has infested the heartwood of a European oak and turned it a rich, dark brown. When that process doesn’t deteriorate the wood itself, it’s sliced to produce this highly desirable, deep brown veneer. Available in flat or quarter cuts as well as rift cut, which produces an exquisite flake pattern when sliced across the wood’s broad medullary rays.
At first glance, paldao resembles American black walnut. This enormous tree is most often found along streams and marshy soils in Indonesia and the Philippines. Paldao grows with a remarkable buttress encircling the lower trunk creating 40’ diameter growths which remote tribes believed held sprits. This is a beautiful veneer: a grey-brown background streaked with highly decorative dark stripes. Flat cut wood produces a cathedral pattern; quarter cut wood has a stripy contrast and is often finely figured.
Among the largest and tallest trees on earth, the redwood produces a rich, warm, inviting veneer that’s as impressive as the tree. Uniformly deep reddish-brown, the grain in quarter cut veneer is beautifully striped or figured by fine markings. Burled veneer (also known as vavona burl) is sliced from huge, prolific burl growths found on occasional redwoods, producing some of the largest and most uniform burled veneer in the world.
This elegant, tobacco-colored veneer is similar to Brazilian Rosewood, but somewhat less contrasty in color. Rich hues range from dark chocolate brown to violet and even black in lively combinations that produce a one-of-a-kind look prized for architectural use. Flat cut, the wood shows a beautiful cathedral pattern; quartered it produces a straight or broken stripe effect.
This is one of the world’s most loved and prized veneers. It ranges in color from lustrous chocolate-brown to purple-black with a cream colored sapwood—all very saturated with a vivid contrast. It has a lively variegated stripe and occasional bee’s wing figure and, when flat cut, produces a characteristic cathedral pattern. Increasingly used as a substitute for the extremely rare but prized Rio rosewood.
Pale yellow-gray to nearly white, sen is a Japanese ash popular in Japan for both furniture and interiors. It has a straight, fine grain when cut on the quarter and a nice cathedral character with a fine grain on either side of the heart when flat cut. When marked with a pommele figure, this veneer is called "tamo." Sen is an excellent choice for a variety of interiors aesthetics including modern, Asian, and minimalist designs.
Tamo is the name given to highly figured, rotary cut, Japanese ash. This highly prized veneer is known and sought-after worldwide for its stunning, lustrous, pommele or "peanut shell" figure—a lively, variable, swirling background with peanut or blister figuring. Colors range from brownish-tan to gray to almost white—all of which provide rare and uncommon options for highly decorative interior spaces and custom furniture.
European walnut is among the most popular veneers in the world market. In recent years, severe frost in France damaged a great number of trees, making good European walnut increasingly harder to find and more expensive than its American cousin. A favorite for high quality architectural woodwork, this veneer has a smooth, even texture and thin, dark, grain markings over a light to dark brown background.