Until I know better = “The Acorn Bowl, but you will know

Oblong 10.25” by 11” standing 2.75” high.

Heavy wood, and oak should be a good guess, but just a guess since so little grain is showing due to the abundance of oak leaves and acorns that are sort of carved / etched to cover the entire piece.

See the photos

Your thoughts are very welcome

Mo

 

Looks like the inside has numerous tree rings,they don't look like lathe lines in the photo.

 

Looks like pyrography,and very well used. Also looks like someone attempted to refinish it.

 

I've never seen a bowl with so much pyrography on it. Too bad about all of the wear, but I like pyrography so think it's pretty interesting!

 

The rings on the inside look too uniform to be tree rings. I think they are lath rings. I'll bet it was beautiful originally. Maybe it had so much wear someone decided to refinish the heck out of it and gave up.

 

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and observations

The bowl seems unfinished but has been used and maybe abused a little

There are no chips cracks or dents but a great deal of color variation, perhaps stains

The worn-look seems fairly uniform which is not what you would expect from daily use or from a failed restoration

The lines are mostly very uniform inside and out, but there are a few exceptions that speak against the lathe. Also I’m not sure how the lathe would work on an oval bowl.

 

Hi,
It may have started out being round and through the years skinkage has caused it be more oval than round.
greg

 

Not saying it is necessarily the case here; but it is quite common for an older bowl to appear oval, when in fact it was round when turned, and only became oval due to shrinkage over time. The 3/4" difference here is consistent with what I've seen on a number of old lathe-turned bowls.

 

Are there any other clues that point to warp besides the oval shape?

On a flat surface the bowl sits cleanly level on top and bottom.

 

It does look to me like there are lathe-marks; and while it is possible to lathe-turn a bowl so it is oval, it is not easy or common, and would leave the foot oval; and the foot here looks round. The kind of shrinkage I'm thinking of would not necessarily make it sit unevenly on either top or bottom; but the bowl would shrink differently with the grain as opposed to cross-grain. I've known that kind of shrinkage to be much more pronounced than one would expect, on bowls that obviously had started out round. Since the foot looks round, that suggests to me that the bowl may well have started out round also.

 

I’ll look closer for distortions in the graphics

 

The kind of shrinkage I am talking about would not cause any noticeable distortion to the graphics.