An Old-Fashioned Talking Board
There are things the earth takes back, and things we cannot bear to surrender. From the woodshed of Smokey Lonesomes, beneath the smell of cedar and scorched wood, came The Spirit Register.
Its beginnings were humble enough. Fashioned from an old dresser, some hundred and thirty years upon this earth, its cedar boards darkened by time and the passing of innumerable hands.
But in the taking apart of it, something was found.
Fingerprints.
Candle wax.
Hidden along the back, where no eye was meant to linger. Small remnants of some forgotten hour, preserved in the dark for all these years.
I have wondered about the hands that left them. Whether a candle burned there for the comfort of the living, or for the company of those who had gone before.
There is no one left to tell us.
And perhaps that is the peculiar sorrow of old things. They remain long after the names, the voices, and the little ceremonies of living have disappeared.
We carried the cedar into the woodshed and began our work.
By hand, the old wood was given another form. Letters and figures were carefully burned into its surface, following the fashion of the talking boards once kept in Victorian parlours, where the living gathered by lamplight to inquire after the dead.
A planchette was fashioned from the same cedar, its little window left open for whatever words might find their way beneath it.
There is something rather fitting about giving this old cedar another life as a spirit board. Its history remains tucked somewhere within the grain.
Only one has been made available for the shop, with its companion remaining in my own keeping.
I cannot say what the old dresser witnessed.
Only that some part of it has been permitted to remain.
Details
Handmade from approximately 130-year-old reclaimed cedar
Salvaged from an antique dresser
Victorian and Edwardian-inspired design
Includes a matching handmade wooden planchette with viewing window
One of a kind
Measures 18“ wide by 13” long
For the curious, the contemplative, and those who have always suspected that old things remember.
An Old-Fashioned Talking Board
There are things the earth takes back, and things we cannot bear to surrender. From the woodshed of Smokey Lonesomes, beneath the smell of cedar and scorched wood, came The Spirit Register.
Its beginnings were humble enough. Fashioned from an old dresser, some hundred and thirty years upon this earth, its cedar boards darkened by time and the passing of innumerable hands.
But in the taking apart of it, something was found.
Fingerprints.
Candle wax.
Hidden along the back, where no eye was meant to linger. Small remnants of some forgotten hour, preserved in the dark for all these years.
I have wondered about the hands that left them. Whether a candle burned there for the comfort of the living, or for the company of those who had gone before.
There is no one left to tell us.
And perhaps that is the peculiar sorrow of old things. They remain long after the names, the voices, and the little ceremonies of living have disappeared.
We carried the cedar into the woodshed and began our work.
By hand, the old wood was given another form. Letters and figures were carefully burned into its surface, following the fashion of the talking boards once kept in Victorian parlours, where the living gathered by lamplight to inquire after the dead.
A planchette was fashioned from the same cedar, its little window left open for whatever words might find their way beneath it.
There is something rather fitting about giving this old cedar another life as a spirit board. Its history remains tucked somewhere within the grain.
Only one has been made available for the shop, with its companion remaining in my own keeping.
I cannot say what the old dresser witnessed.
Only that some part of it has been permitted to remain.
Details
Handmade from approximately 130-year-old reclaimed cedar
Salvaged from an antique dresser
Victorian and Edwardian-inspired design
Includes a matching handmade wooden planchette with viewing window
One of a kind
Measures 18“ wide by 13” long
For the curious, the contemplative, and those who have always suspected that old things remember.
