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When Time stops: How Petrified Wood Bookends Anchor the Universe
When you look at these petrified wood bookends, you see utilitarian beauty. However, this sculpture is actually the incarnate of time itself. Einstein explained how time, place, and velocity are all relative to some point of reference. This specimen provides such a point of reference allowing an understanding of everything through the lens of one object.
This specimen was collected by Glen Evans (see left image) in the mid-1900s. Evans and his wife collected an astonishing total of 5,000 geological specimens in 40 years of work. Today, many of these specimens, including the petrified wood bookends, are housed at the Orma J. Smith Museum of Natural History.
This image shows a cross section of wood artificially petrified in a few days using a chemical process developed by materials scientists. Photo courtesy of PNNL.
When you look at these petrified wood bookends, you see utilitarian beauty. However, this sculpture is actually the incarnate of time itself. Einstein explained how time, place, and velocity are all relative to some point of reference. This specimen provides such a point of reference allowing an understanding of everything through the lens of one object.
By: Andrew Clifford
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When you look at these petrified wood bookends, you see utilitarian beauty. However, this sculpture is actually the incarnate of time itself. Einstein explained how time, place, and velocity are all relative to some point of reference. This specimen provides such a point of reference allowing an understanding of everything through the lens of one object. I came upon these petrified bookends in the Orma J. Smith Museum of Natural History at the College of Idaho. They immediately caught my eye, displaying vivid greys and greens spread across a smooth reflective and perfectly symmetrical surface that I imagine would provide nice framing to a row of books. This simple fascination with appearance gave birth to my quest for the true meaning of this specimen. By diving deeper into their meaning, I discovered that the petrified wood becomes a means to understand time as a function of the balance between elements of nature and elements of human culture. This specimen is a window into the past by the history of its formation, into the present by its function as bookends and composition, and into the future as a chemical technology.
The Formation of Petrified Wood
The process of wood petrification is quite fascinating, involving a complete transformation from live trees to inorganic rock. The formation of petrified wood takes several millions of years, and begins with the burying of a tree by means of ash or lava flows. In the case of this particular bookend, ash or lava flows buried a tree about 25 million years ago during the Miocene epoch (Carpenter). After an initial burial, mineral rich water permeates the decaying wood replacing wood with silica-based compounds. Next, it is controversial how the wood is completely replaced by rock. One theory postulates that the wood is gradually replaced with minerals, while another suggests that the minerals crystalize in available cracks. Regardless of method, the end result is an almost exact copy of the wood cell structure and shape in stone (Jabbar). Therefore, in the beginning, time is represented by the process of preserving a living organism from the past.
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Mount Hood is one possible candidate for the initial burying of this specimen in ash.
Glen Evans
The Artist: How Bookends Were Crafted
Glen Evans is a lapidary originally from Iowa but lived primarily in Caldwell, Idaho. Economically supported by a very successful fly-tying and fishing business, Evans and his wife started collecting rocks and minerals as a secondary passion. After 40 years of collecting, they had an astonishing 5,000 specimens. Their perspective on petrified wood was primarily one focusing on its artistic qualities. This explains why they didn’t let any petrified wood go to waste. In the case of the specimen at hand, in creating it, Evans likely had to make it from imperfect petrified wood, where parts of the rock were incompletely formed or missing, allowing for only small sections to be suitable for grinding and polishing (Carpenter). To create these perfectly symmetrical bookends, Evans cut a quarter chunk across the grain of wood and then butterflied them open, creating a mirror image.