Spalted Beech is a beech tree that has fungi in it, as the trees starts to rot, which creates these wonderful patterns. It's important to "get" the timber at the right time - long enough into the rotting process for the patterns to appear, but not before the wood is too rotten so that it is too soft to be of any use. I used this spalted beech, to make this wooden platter.

Over the years I've made a number of different items from English Spalted Beech, and at fayres, it is the one item that people always ask about - quite rightly so!