Making bowls from tree burls started January 2019 as a hobby. While gathering wood at our lake house in the Adirondack Mountains, I came across a small burl, left there by the person that cuts and stacks firewood for us. Taking it into the garage, I started to carve it into a bowl. I was hooked!
This lead me to form connections with a few people that harvest trees in the area and asked them to save me the burls. Soon I had 50 burls ranging from 12”x12” to 36”x24”. That’s when I ran into a huge learning curve. The problem was, many people carve bowls, however very few carve them from burls. Burls are extremely hard and carving them eat up tools, making them expensive and time consuming to make.
Most of what I learned has been self taught through trial and error. The first 17 bowls I carved were given away as gifts to family and close friends. Then last October, while visiting a local craft store in town, the owner asked if I would be interested in selling them. That was the end of my amature bowl career.
Now I am selling to several upscale stores and galleries across the northeast. No bowl is alike (these are not turned on a lathe). Each is unique and one-of-a-kind. They are food functional, though most people see them as artwork and just display them.
We hope you enjoy their beauty and if interested, visit one of the vendor
listed below or email us at mail@burls-to-bowls.com
One of the many aspects I love about what I do is that no two bowls are alike. There are a few reasons for this. First, no two burls are alike. Second, I don't turn my bowls on a lathe, I carve them with tools.
Each burl is made of a different wood type; Cherry, Birch, Maple etc. The tree type will also determine the density, color and shape of the bowl. Depending on the girth of the burls will determine how long it will have to dry before I can start working on it. Smaller bowls will need to dry for 6 months to a year after it has been harvested.
Large ones can take a few years.
All of our burls are taken off trees that are harvested. If you remove a burl from a live tree, the tree will die.
