Early 2012 - One Tree Project - Boxes for Italy

In October 2011 we went to Tuscany to visit the places my mother's ancestors came from.  There were six of us on the trip - my mother and father, my sister and her husband, and Corinne and I.  We stayed in two cities near Pisa - Lucca and Barga.  Of course a great time was had by all.  My mother still has first cousins living near Lucca, and they've always been such gracious hosts whenever we visit.  I was thinking of some way of thanking them with something I could build, when I happened to notice the emblem of the City of Lucca on a municipal trashcan on one of our many walks through the city.  Iinspiration struck and in a few minutes the idea was pretty much fully fledged.  As I've said before, creativity works in strange and marvelous ways - but a trash can for inspiration?

A few months after we got back, we were up in Talkeetna and we ran into our friend Arthur Mannix who told me all about the "One Tree Project".  It apparently originated in England about 15 years ago and tells the story of a single tree and the extraordinary value it brought to society, its beauty and the versatility of its wood.  Since then there have been several other One Tree Projects, in Tasmania, the UK, and Fairbanks, Alaska.  From this, Arthur, who is a man with a great deal of initiative, started one in Talkeetna, felling a large birch tree, milling it, and giving the lumber away to anyone who would commit to building something with it.  Eventually there will be an exhibit of the finished pieces.  Well, free wood, a chance to exhibit my work, and a project in my mind just waiting to be gotten after?  Who could refuse?  So I loaded up several birch boards, took them back to Anchorage, and my first project was two small keepsake boxes, built as gifts for my Italian relatives.

The tops of the boxes are made of maple and bloodwood to provide the red and white of the Lucca city seal, while the remainder is made of birch from the One Tree Project with the exception of the small Italian Tricolor band, which is made of two strips of maple and one of bloodwood with one of the maple strips painted green.

They're now in Italy.  I think that really adds something to the idea of the One Tree Project.  Thanks, Arthur.