I gave this bowl to my wife because she likes waterfalls,” says woodworker Tom Pleatman as he shows me a yellowwood bowl he made. It’s a frigid January morning with an icy wind blowing in the tall locust trees outside his Media, Pa., home studio. The bowl warms in my hands, its golden rings of sapwood and heartwood forming the cascading lines of a sonnet to fallen trees.
When I take a piece of wood, I feel a responsibility to do it justice. I try to communicate something about what the tree went through in its life.
Tom uses only wood from local trees felled by nature or necessity to, he says, “keep the memory of the tree alive. I make bowls as a tribute to trees. When I take a piece of wood, I feel a responsibility to do it justice. I try to communicate something about what the tree went through in its life.” There’s no room in his studio for anonymous lumber from faraway places. Sometimes Pleatman knew the tree in its glory days growing in a backyard or arboretum. More often, he sets eyes on the donor for the first time after it has lost a limb or its life.
William Penn’s native woods and the Philadelphia region’s abundance of gardens make fallen trees a fact of life. Word of Pleatman’s work travels through the local green community like a gentle breeze in the treetops, from public gardens to college campuses to private homes. Catalpas, cherries, crabapples, dogwoods, hackberries, hawthorns, lindens, locusts, maples, oaks, silverbells, sweetgums, tuliptrees, walnuts—when these trees fall or get pruned due to storms, construction, insects, disease, or simply age, tree huggers call Tom because they know he will make something beautiful to honor their beloved trees.
Rusty Miller
As a child, Rusty Miller would visit his grandmother at Summerhill, her 100-acre farm along the Crum Creek in Newtown Square. He has vivid memories of the ancient sycamore that grew outside the 18th-century farmhouse on the property. “It engulfed the house,” he says, “and it was much loved.” Rusty is now the steward for the farm. Several years ago, an arborist told him that the sycamore had a canker and must be cut down before it fell on the house. “It was heartbreaking,” says Miller. The arborist, who was familiar with Tom Pleatman’s work, suggested that Rusty have something made with the wood. Today Rusty and his husband, Ken Nimblett, treasure the sycamore bowls that Tom made and their memories of the tree. “We feel the tree lives on,” says Rusty.
Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square lost one of the great players of the garden stage when lightning struck the Kentucky coffee tree behind their Open Air Theatre. The tree never missed a performance from the time it was planted by Pierre du Pont in 1915 to its death in 2007. Longwood commissioned Pleatman to make bowls from the historic tree, including a set that was auctioned off at last spring’s Rare Plant Auction benefiting the Delaware Center for Horticulture.
When Jeff Wilson, Arboretum Manager for Tyler Arboretum in Media, came to work the morning after a heavy April snowstorm, he saw a massive branch from their cedar of Lebanon lying on the ground. The cedar is very special to Tyler people. One of the original trees planted by Arboretum founders Minshall and Jacob Painter in the mid-1800s, it is the largest of its kind in Pennsylvania and quite picturesque. Wilson didn’t want to use it for mulch or firewood. He safeguarded the fallen branch and knew who to call. Pleatman split the logs, shaped the halves into crude circles with a chainsaw, then loaded them into his sturdy car and took them home. Wilson was happy, knowing that the cedar would eventually return to Tyler as beautiful bowls to be sold in its shop.
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