A single weathered tree, rising from a stone. 13 inches tall, 9 inches at its widest, 4 inches across at the base.

The base is turned from claro walnut, the most prized of the American walnuts, with deep chocolate-brown grain streaked through with rust and amber. It is not a regular shape. The form is asymmetric and faceted, narrowing toward the top where the driftwood emerges. In matte finish, the walnut reads more like a river stone than wood, a piece of weathered rock pulled from the bed of a slow creek. The eye reads it as mineral before it reads it as wood.

From the top rises a piece of spider driftwood. The trunk is lean and gnarled, marked by the weather it survived, and it splits into a small crown of branches that reach upward and slightly away. Partway up the trunk, the wood opens into a natural window, a hollow that catches light from behind. The driftwood is finished in matte, which keeps it reading as weathered tree rather than polished object.

The two materials are joined so cleanly that the eye does not see a seam. The tree appears to grow from the stone the way a wind-bent pine clings to a granite outcrop, or the way a small ash sometimes finds purchase in the crack of a boulder. The piece is quiet. It does not announce itself across a room. It rewards the slower kind of attention, the kind given to a scholar's rock, a piece of bonsai, an ink painting of a single lone tree. On a desk, a low shelf, a bedside table, or anywhere it can be lived with at close range, it holds the kind of presence that grows with time. One of a kind. H

Dimensions: 13" tall × 9" wide (overall) × 4" wide (base)

$250