Monticello tree lives on in woodturner's chess sets

On April 16, 1807, Thomas Jefferson likely was looking toward the future.

That’s often the case when someone plants a tree, which, in this instance, was a tulip poplar. The third president duly noted the event in his garden book by writing, “planted 1. Laurodendron in margin of S.W. shrub circle from the nursery.”

This placed the tree in the vicinity of the southwest corner of his Monticello home — the very place where a tulip poplar grew into a majestic landmark and was admired by generations of visitors.

Age and disease ultimately required the tree to be taken down during the evenings of June 25 and 26, 2008. Because the trunk of the tree had been hollow for more than 100 years, its age could not be determined by counting growth rings.

Although it can’t be established with certainty that the tree was planted by Jefferson’s hand, there’s strong evidence it was. Even if, as some have suggested, the tree was a “successor” to the original, it still has an obviously long and powerful connection with the world-famous home.

For a lot of people, the tree’s association with history makes its wood something to cherish. Realizing this, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which has owned and operated Monticello since 1923, worked out an arrangement with local master woodturner Frederick Williamson to create heirloom objects from the wood — items that then could be purchased.

The exquisite bowls Williamson turned from the historic wood were so well received that he invited fellow woodturner Kirk McCauley to turn some of the smaller pieces. McCauley, the former owner of Bellair Service garage on Ivy Road, since has turned hundreds of bowls from the wood, but he didn’t stick exclusively with that task.

“Kirk has a lot of creative enthusiasm, and he has made a wider variety of things from the wood than I have,” Williamson said. “Kirk was the fellow in our club [Central Virginia Woodturners] who I thought could do the best job with the poplar, and he certainly has.

“What you want is a very consistent finish. A good, clean cut on the turning, and then good sanding so the wood’s character and glow can really come out.

“He was the best in our club at doing that. I’m personally blown away by the number of bowls he has turned. And every piece is numbered and documented as a series.”

Currently, McCauley is working on “number 600-and-something,” with one of his most magnificent achievements counting as one object. It’s a 32-piece chess set that he worked on for several weeks.

“I get bored real easy, so bowls get tiring after a while,” McCauley said recently as he showed a visitor around his workshop in the lower level of his Albemarle County home. “I’m not a chess enthusiast, but I know Thomas Jefferson was, so I thought I’d give it a try.

“Obviously, something like this is not all turned; it takes a lot of carving, too. Basically, I turn the round pieces, and then I have to start cutting and carving to end up with the figures.

“All the pawns are turned separately by hand, so no two will be perfectly matched. Everything is different, but I think that’s the beauty of it.”

McCauley doesn’t use a duplicator on his turning lathe that would create pieces exactly alike. He uses only hand tools, which makes each chess piece one of a kind.

All the objects Williamson and McCauley create from the historic tree come with a card from Monticello that tells about the tree and authenticates their provenance. The bowls are sold in Monticello’s gift shop, and McCauley also sells his works through Living Artisans for Your Home in Richmond.

When the retired auto mechanic brought the first chess set he made from the tulip poplar to Living, it sold before it went on display. The shop’s owner, Martee Johnson, purchased it for herself.

“We’ve sold quite a few of Kirk’s bowls, wine stoppers and other pieces made from the tulip poplar,” said Johnson, who opened Living a year and a half ago. “We sell nothing but handmade pieces by artists who make beautiful things. But the chess set was particularly unique, and very special.

“The thing about these pieces is that there’s only going to be a limited number. When the wood’s gone, the wood’s gone. I think Kirk is incredibly talented and has done a wonderful job of continuing history by taking the wood of this tree and turning it into art that will be everlasting.”

McCauley also has made a chess set out of wood from the Stratford Hall Plantation, which is the family home of Robert E. Lee. Like Monticello, Stratford Hall receives a percentage of sales for the use of its name and the wood from the property.

The black pieces of the Stratford Hall chess set are made from walnut, and the white pieces were fashioned from oak. To distinguish the black pieces from the white pieces from the tulip poplar wood in the Monticello set, McCauley used spalted wood for the black figures.

“Spalting is the dark stripes in the wood that comes from bugs or from an excess of moisture when the wood is on the ground,” McCauley explained. “Spalting basically means the wood is decaying, but if you catch it at the right time, it’s usable and makes beautiful designs.

“The colors in the Monticello tree have been amazing. We’ve seen reds, greens, black, brown, blue, purple.

“The thing is, you don’t see all the color, figures and shapes in the wood until you start turning it. Nature has taken care of all the beautiful colors and designs, and we’re just showing off what Mother Nature has done.”

Some of the unusual colors resulted from the heroic efforts taken over the years to keep the tulip poplar alive and protect it. Steel rods and cables were used to stabilize the tree, and many decades ago copper wire was laced through the tree to serve as a lightning rod.

“The metal left black and purple streaks, and of course the tree survived all the storms and hurricanes that had come through,” McCauley said. “The winds had made it twist and toughened it, and that adds to the beauty of the wood.

“When you’re turning a piece, you never know how beautiful it’s going to be until you get down into the wood and see what’s there. Sometimes all the color is way down inside the wood.”

McCauley has a passion for revealing the beauty in wood, and his expansive imagination has created items one wouldn’t necessarily associate with woodturning. He has turned wooden lampshades so thin that light shows through, and his wooden cowboy hats are great eye catchers.

“Everybody loves the look of them, but they don’t sell around here,” McCauley said of his hat line. “I hear they do real good with them in Texas.

“I can even somewhat custom fit them for a person. I made one for myself that I wear at shows. It’ll be real nice to have in a hailstorm.”

McCauley estimates the supply of wood for turning bowls from the Monticello tulip poplar will be exhausted by this summer. He’ll be able to continue making small items like chess pieces for a while longer from the wood that was too small to make into bowls.

“Eventually, the wood from the Monticello tree will run out, and there will be no more,” McCauley said. “Probably the most exciting thing for me when it comes to this tulip poplar is that it could have possibly been planted by Thomas Jefferson.

“And now it’s being made into things that are traveling all over the world.”

McCauley’s work locally is available at Monticello and Zestivities in Crozet. For more information, visit his website at www.kirkmccauley.com or call 293-7525.