Crotch Mahogany Veneer

A crotch is cut from the fork, where the trunk divides into two limbs. The fibres there are under compression from both directions and they sweep and double back on themselves, which is what produces the feather — the plume of flame figure running up the center of the leaf. It is not a grade or a cut you can ask a mill for more of. It is a specific part of a specific tree.

So the constraint is size, and it governs the design rather than the other way round. Crotch leaves are short and narrow, the figure is strongest down the middle and fades toward the edges, and yield from any one fork is small. This is centerpiece material: a door panel, a cabinet front, a table top, usually book-matched or laid four-way so the feather mirrors itself. Specifying it across a long run is not economy, it is arithmetic that does not work.

Because the quantity is fixed by the tree, reserve the whole piece at the start. There is no coming back for more of the same fork. Available raw, two-ply, paper-backed, or pressed to panel, and we will lay out the match with you before anything is cut.