Sort of a survey, Chinese Noble Woods.

[AJS]

I'm not sure if there is a better sub-forum for this topic so I'm posting it here as a survey of what people know, hope that's OK.

Anyways, I'm interested in working with Zitan, Jichimu, Huanghuali and other Chinese woods, but I could do with some clarification regarding the Latin names of particular species.

Firstly Zitan. I have it as a species of Pterocarpus but can't seem to find a concrete answer as to what the binomial classification would be. I have seen Zitan identified as P. erinaceous, P. indicus and P. santalinus. Which one is it most likely to be? I know that Zitan is often labelled as Purple Sandalwood, but does not produce true Sandalwood Essential Oil, but P. Santalinus is called Red Sandalwood and does produce Sandalwood EO, eventhough I have seen that labelled as Zitan too. I had read that most antique Chinese Zitan is likely to be P. indicus but would have thought given the value of the wood and the high regard in which it was held, not to mention it's supposed rarity, that there wouldn't be several species using the same common name. Can anyone help?

Carrying on with Zitan, I would like some clarification as to the differences between Xia-Yie-Tan and Da-Yie-Tan. I have read that the former is found exclusively in India but want to ask if the two types have been given subspecific designation or are they just the same wood from different parts of the world? Is there any difference between the two types in realtion to grain and colour?

Final question regarding Zitan. With the exception of Xia-Yie-Tan, the species seems to have a large geographic range encompassing China, India and other parts of Asia, was there a preferred region for obtaining wood when it was used for Chinese furniture?

Finally I'd like to ask about Hongmu or Hungmu. Are these two different species of trees? I have seen it suggested, using both spellings that the wood was often used as a substitue for Zitan because of it's similiarity, but there seems to be some confusion regarding the specific designation of this wood. I've read that Hungmu is a subspecies of P. indicus occuring in SE Asia, but surely a subspecific variety has more in common with Zitan, if it is P. indicus, than a mere resemblance?
Also is Hongmu different than Hungmu? I have read that Hongmu (also called Suen-Dzee was imported from Africa and has three different colour varieties: pale, red and black. Can someone please clarify this point for me.

I look forward to your replies and would like to say thankyou in advance.
Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[altaciii]

I kinda lost you after, "firstly Zitan." It seems to me one of the people on this site to answer your questions would be dave lee (rarest woods). He does a lot of work with the Chinese woods.

 

[AJS]

Whilst digging for more information on Pterocarpus indicus I learned that this is actually Narra lumber which is quite common and doesn't look anything like the Zitan I have seen pictured on many sites. The reference to most imported Zitan being P. indicus came from www.dynastyroad.com

altaciii, no worries, I'm pretty much lost myself after firstly Zitan too. Why can't people use Latin names? It would save so much confusion

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[Russianwolf]

While I can't speak specifically to this, Dave and a couple others who have researched it extensively can likely give better answers, I think that you will be hard pressed to find any tree that has an exclusive common name. Especially one that was used hundreds of years ago since it was much harder for the people of that time to discern the nuances of identifying Species within a Gerera. Some of the identifiers are not very visible to the naked eye.

Given that many of the common names are derived from an appearance of the tree (leaves, fruit, etc.) or from an appearance of the wood (type of figure the grain shows), or from the smell of the wood. Several sub species or even species in a given region may wind up with the same or very similar common names that then get translated to the same name in another language.

One of the most common example I can give is Purpleheart. There are 23 species of tree from South America that share that common name. All are from the same Genus, but not the same tree. So you can have 23 Botanical names and be correct, but still not label the actual piece of wood correctly.

Zitan, from what I've seen is now most commonly called Pterocarpus Santilinus by most authorities, but I bet some old Ming furniture made from Zitan will not be this wood if subjected to a DNA test.

 

[AJS]

Point taken about common names. I've also been doing some research on Australian hardwoods and there are a mind boggling number of common names in use that refer to different species depending upon which region they hail from. It certainly makes sense that centuries ago the level exactitude we have today was unobtainable then.

Re Pterocarpus santalinus, I'm certainly willing to defer to your experience here, but the reason I thought that it may not be true Zitan (whatever that turns out to be) was because Rarest Wood said in another thread that despite the fact it was called Purple Sandalwood by the Chinese, Zitan doesn't produce Sandalwood Oil. P santalinus on the other hand produces an extract called Red Sandalwood that is used in Ayurvedic medicine.

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[ed4copies]

One additional comment on "common names"/

I have never seen a write up of how the names are translated to English. Are old, now extinct foreign species given a distinct name? Or lumped into an English word that is convenient??

 

[Russianwolf]

Dave was the one that told me that Zitan was Santilinus, and it's listed as such on several of the web sources I've found, so I don't know other than that.


Ed, you probably never will see anything on how words are translated since translation is more of an art than a science. You have the literal translation, then you have contextual translation.

"Do Svedania" for example is the formal Russian "Goodbye", but it's literal translation is "Until our next date". "date" meaning the boy/girl type of date.

There are something like 100 words in the Eskimo language for snow depending on the characteristics of a particular batch. In English there might be 4 words covering them all. In English is may take a paragraph to describe what they cover and understand with a single word.

So translating the name of a tree or wood to English is a "what will make the most sense" job, that may not pick up nuances in the original name.

I'll give you another example from Russian. Go into a bar and ask for a "little water". You just asked for the literal translation of "Vodka". Vodka being the diminutive form of the word "Voda" which is "Water". I don't think that any of us will confuse one for the other when we drink it, but it was named that since it looks like water and was originally drank in small amounts.

 

[ed4copies]

A similar and amusing thing happened to me when I visited Germany in college.

I stopped at a pub and ordered a beer. Soon, "Another beer, please" in German. Well, a few more times and then I was told they HAD no other beer. Perplexed, I enquired as to what they were pouring that certainly looked like beer and had been beer, earlier.

After some translational issues, I realized that "another" meant a "different brand", I should instead have been asking for "noch ein" --one of the same beer.

Made for a great story when I got home and told my friends I drank one pub out of beer!!!

 

[AJS]

There is an excerpt from an article here discussing the likely species of "true" Zitan if anyone is interested http://www.chinese-furniture.com/cgi-bin/ccf.cgi?stt=stp&pgn=newsletter_archive/newsletter_2.html&id=

Kindest regards,
Alex

 

[Rarest wood]

i will pm you my telephone number and we can talk about these timbers since you live in the uk it will be cheap for you to call I will then explane all
for the record tzu-t'an is not pterocarpus indicus the confusion arose in the older books on the subject what they mean to say is zitan is a pterocarp from India = indicus for the most part zitan is pterocarpus santalinus. i suspect another species being called zitan but again I need to do more work on this what I can say is that the other zitan is not a dalbergia species nor is it bois der rose from madagascar period no matter what some dodgy web site tell you when they try to sell you their new furniture.

Hongmu, hungmu, suanzhi, blackwood, are all the same timber this again is a dalbergia though you will be hardpressed to find out which one it is. I think I have an idea what it is but am doing some more academic work on this particular point. I do have a small board of HONGMU and also some furniture in all of these timbers including Huanghuali, zitan and hongmu.

so in essence tzu-t'an is 99.9% certain to be Pterocarpus santalinus with a slim possibility that it may also have grown at some point outside of India at one time. The chinese historians like to assert that it also grew in China but there has NEVER been any concrete evidense to support this assertion and a wealth of evidence that the chinese imported it into china from india
Tzu-t'an is a corruption of the word chandan which is zitan in southern indian and so proves the point.

should anyone require a pen blank in HONGMU I have recently cut some!
It makes a lovely pen and turns so well. I can see why the chinese loved it so much from the middle qing onwards.
I also have blanks in all the other NOble timbers including some nanmu boxwood zelcova and other species the chinese used

 

[Rarest wood]

o forgot to say that zitan is sometimes called purple sandalwood it does not mean that it is related to santalum album which is sandalwood proper but it just means that purple sandalwood is a direct translation of one particular chinese name for the timber. try to think of the sandalwood part of the name in purple sandalwood as synonymous with say rosewood, zitan does smell wonderfull when being worked and has a more musky spicy scent very pleasant this more masculine aroma also confirms that it is a pterocarpus species as well. If you want some zitan you had better have big pockets as the only way to get it nowerdays is to buy some chinese classical furniture made in it and for the price of a house you can have one nice piece of furniture.