Story of a Salad Set

One reason why I wanted to start a spoon blog is because sometimes the spoons have interesting stories.

This salad set I made for some friends in Iowa, Joe and Erin. I wanted to make a really special thank you gift for them for giving me black walnut wood from the pruning they were doing in their yard. True, they didn’t want the wood and were just glad that someone could use it, but it has been very valuable to me. Most of my spoons come from their tree.

The first spoon I made from their tree was a beautiful, large mixing spoon.

I showed it to Erin one day; she was very impressed that something so nice came from the dead wood on their tree. I was determined to make something at least as nice as that first spoon for them.

It took me a while to get started. I had a few orders to fill and we were in the middle of moving to upstate New York. When I did start carving a spoon for them, I thought I had a really great piece of wood to work with, but as I worked away at it, half of the bowl had to be cut off because of split wood. Well, that wasn’t much fun, but there was a lot of wood left over, so I put it in my carving bucket to look at another day.

A few weeks later I tried to make another spoon for them. Crazy thing was, half of that bowl had to be carved out too!

Well, I looked at the two half spoons together and thought, now what can I do with these? Idea! Instead of making one spoon, which won’t be as nice as that first one, how about turning these two half spoons into a funky salad set?

I think it turned out quite well.