alcarol has recovered rare black oak trunks revealed in a small Alpine peatland. Radiocarbon dating traces their origin to the 5th century BC. A peatland is a wet, acidic and oxygen-poor environment where layers of plant material accumulate over millennia. Deprived of oxygen, the wood begins a natural semi-fossilization: minerals and iron salts in the peat react with the tannins in the oak, darkening it from deep brown to near-black while dramatically increasing its hardness.
This slow transformation can endure for thousands of years, turning each trunk into a unique geological-like artifact. Sites of peat-preserved wood are extremely rare, and recovering usable material requires skilled, delicate intervention. Even then, only a small portion of the wood survives the complex drying process needed to stabilize it.
alcarol selects the finest trunks and preserves their naturally eroded surfaces, cutting each piece in a way that respects its ancient form. Transparent volumes evoke the still waters that protected the wood for millennia, not to enclose it, but to reveal and frame its story. The section planes remain untreated to the touch, allowing the hand to feel the warm, vibrant soul of a material shaped by time, silence and earth.
The Peatland Collection becomes a dialogue between past and present—ancient oak emerging from dark depths to inhabit contemporary space with profound, quiet force.
