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Why use Jackson Country Oak Furniture
English Oak, Pedunculate Oak, French oak or in it's Latin form, Quercus robur, Quercus pedunculata has been used for centuries and generations in the making of buildings, furniture and the like throughout the U.K. The craft of using Oak is not confined to the annals of history, it is very much alive today and becoming increasingly salient and relevent in today's world, a 21st century 'Neo-Arts and Crafts' movement for the Post-Industrial/Post-Modern/Post-Post-Modern era
John Ruskin, one of the key influences on the Arts and Crafts philosophy foresaw the interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft, relating the moral and social health of a nation to the qualities of its architecture and design. The Arts and Crafts movement stood for traditional, local craftsmanship. Ruskin believed a healthy society depended on skilled and creative workers. The Arts and Craft movement espoused economic/social reform and has been said to be essentially anti-industrial, commercialisation. The Arts and Crafts style started as a reaction against the styles that were developed by mechanical means. The Arts and Crafts objects were simple in form, without superfluous decoration, and how they were constructed was often still visible, applying 'form and function.' They tended to emphasise the qualities of the materials used, employing 'truth to the material'. Sir Nikolaus Pevsner considered Arts and Crafts an influence on Modernism, which similiarly used simpler forms.
Not only is Oak one of the most aesthetically pleasing materials, with it's patternation and weathering, but the colouration varies depending on where the cut of wood comes from, even the variety of oak tree. All this combined creates a very tactile material.
Oak has a tight cell structure and grain, with a density of around 0.75 g/cm³ this means it is strong, also highly durable to the weather/time and partially due to it's high tannin content it is naturally resistant to insect/fungicidal attack, Oak requires no preservative treatment. Using traditional joints/pegs means that when Oak dries, it becomes stronger, as do the joints.
Oak buildings last many hundreds of years, but only requires 30+ years of growth, making Oak an invaluable, durable, renewable and one of the most sustainable building materials available to man. While it may naturally live to a few centuries, many of the oldest trees are pollarded/coppiced, both extending the tree's potential lifespan, and health. This showing that humans and nature can co-operate and even flourish together.
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Biodiversity, Sustainability, Equality and Peace!
Despite having more woodland and forest than 20 years ago, research looking at 'Biodiversity in the New Forest' carried out by Bournemouth University, Natural England and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology has indicated that British woodlands are less biologically distinctive than they were 70 years ago.
Oak is of importance to the British wildlife. Numerous insects live on the leaves, buds and in the acorns. Oak supports the highest biodiversity of insects of any British plant (>400 spp). In a British Oak woodland, you have the possibility of finding 284 different insect species scattered over a single Oak tree, compared to only 4 different insect species over an introduced Horse Chestnut tree. Acorns form a valuable food resource for several mammal and bird species, such as the Eurasian Jay and Squirrel. The Oak foliage creates a canopy that allows more natural light onto the wood/forest floor, in turn allowing the supporting of more flora and fauna than that of the Scots Pine, for example.
When growing Oak trees absorb substantial amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and in turn create O2. CO2 remains within the wood until it is either burned or returned to the ecosystem, acting as a Carbon sink. Oak is one of the few materials which actively reduces the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
We, as a company try to use locally sourced materials, whenever possible, meaning that we cut down on carbon miles, supporting local trade and businesses.
Using Oak also helps to alleviate illegal logging, harvesting, transportation, purchase/sale of timber. Illegal logging is a serveren problem, damaging forests, communities and the economy as a whole. The identification of illegally logged or traded timber is technically difficult, making legal means near impossible to stop the importation of illegally sourced timber for timber importing countries, such as in the U.K. It is estimated that illegal logging in public lands alone causes losses in assets and revenue in excess of $10 billion per annum. In 2002, the World Wildlife Fund conducted research that showed that in Africa, rates of illegal logging vary from 50% for Cameroon to 80% in Liberia, where the profits from the timber industry have helped fuel the civil war. With access to natural resources set to become even more tighter in the 21st century, it is another one of the growing reasons why to choose Oak over other woods.
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