History of bog oak, from 10,000 BCE to your living room

A tree older than writing

The oldest specimens of bog oak are around 10,000 years old. To grasp what that means, it helps to step back in time. 10,000 years ago there was no civilisation on Earth in the modern sense. Humans were only just learning to sow grain. The world's population was around 5 million, fewer than the people living in Krakow and Warsaw combined today.

The tree that grew back then now lies in our workshops. Or stands in someone's dining room as a table.

The timeline

10,000 BCE. The dawn of civilisation. Humans move from a hunter-gatherer way of life to a settled one. At the same time, in Polish rivers, the first oaks are growing that, several thousand years later, will be drowned and turned into bog oak.

7,750 BCE. Bog oak begins to form. Trees that fell into the water during the last glaciation start their process of mineralisation.

6,800 BCE. The first Neolithic settlements appear on what are now Polish lands. Humans build permanent homes, but the bog oak is still lying in the water, waiting.

3,300 BCE. Cuneiform script emerges in Mesopotamia. That is 4,500 years after bog oak first started forming. The Sumerians record their first economic accounts. The wood from which they could have made tablets is lying thousands of kilometres away, in Polish rivers.

2,600 BCE. The Egyptians build the pyramids at Giza. Cheops, Chephren, Mycerinus. All of these constructions are younger than the logs floating today in our workshops.

1,200 BCE. The Trojan War. Achilles, Hector, Helen. Bog oak has already existed for eight thousand years.

753 BCE. The founding of Rome. Romulus and Remus. The log we will turn into a table is already nearly nine thousand years old.

1 CE. The birth of Christ. The bridge of time between that event and the formation of bog oak is longer than the bridge between the birth of Christ and today.

1163 CE. Construction begins on Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The tree that, eight hundred years later, will become a table has already been lying in the water for eleven thousand years.

1492 CE. Columbus reaches America. Bog oak exists, but no European has yet dug it up.

1886 CE. The Statue of Liberty rises on its island in New York. The mineralisation of the wood continues without pause.

1939 CE. The Second World War breaks out. Trees pulled from Polish rivers in those years are now reaching our customers as finished tables.

Today. We extract logs from the beds of rivers and peat bogs. After 10 years of drying they reach the workshop. After 4 to 7 weeks of work they become a piece of furniture.

Why this story matters

A bog oak piece is not just a piece of wooden furniture. It is a piece of furniture made of time. Every log has lived through more history than any civilisation we know.

When a client buys such a table, they do not buy an object. They buy a fragment of the material history of the world. A tree that grew while the first paintings were being made in the caves of Lascaux. That survived floods, glaciation and the shifting of a river bed. That waited thousands of years to find its way into someone's home.

Guests ask where this table comes from. The answer is not the name of a factory, it is a story. The name of the river the wood came from. The result of the radiocarbon dating. The name of the carpenter who worked on it. The serial number under which it was registered in the workshop's book.

C14 certificate as proof

Without radiocarbon dating, this story would only be a story. With a certificate it becomes a scientific fact. Every log is tested in an accredited laboratory before processing. The result gives the age with an accuracy of a few decades.

The client receives the original laboratory report along with our certificate of origin. Together these documents form a full chain of custody for the piece. They can be shown to anyone who doubts its authenticity.

Your fragment of history

There is a finite amount of bog oak in the world. Every log that arrives at our workshop carries its own unique story. Once entered into the Book of Tables, that story becomes permanent. Someone fifty years from now will know where the piece they just inherited from their grandfather actually came from.

Contact us to reserve your piece →