This tray was shaped from a spalted aspen burl collected near Fish Lake, just outside Whitehorse. The forest up there is soft underfoot, a mixture of aspen and spruce, and the ground gives way gently toward water. In that kind of place, things decay slowly. Patterns form. The wood begins to shift from structure to story.

Its shape followed the natural curves of the burl—wide at both ends, narrowing in the middle. Not quite symmetrical. Not meant to be. Inside, the grain moves in slow waves, interrupted by the dark tracings of spalting. There’s no polish to hide them. Just enough finish to hold the surface, to let it speak.

It’s a piece that balances presence and subtlety—quietly complex, shaped with care, and rooted in the landscape it came from.