A wetland is an ecosystem perpetually shaped and saturated by water. In these rare environments, nature can preserve organic materials—such as wood—for thousands of years, protecting them from decay and transforming them over time. Among these exceptional testimonies of the past lies Abonos™, an ancient semi-fossilized wood known since Celtic times, found only in a few alpine alluvial wetlands.
Dragged by violent floods and deposited along riverbeds, the trunks became buried under layers of gravel, clay and sand. Beneath the surface, in low-oxygen and mineral-rich conditions, a millennia-long semi-fossilization process began: iron, minerals and tannins slowly bonded together, giving the wood extraordinary hardness and creating its unmistakable palette of colours—from golden browns to deep greys and intense blacks. The darker the tone, the older the trunk: some pieces are hundreds of years old, others reach over 8,000 years.
Each log is a unique document of time, shaped by its environment. Clay yields warmer hues, gravel creates colder shades, and every grain line becomes a natural drawing, revealing the slow choreography of currents, sediments and seasons. No two Abonos trunks can ever share the same appearance, making this wood as rare as a geological find and as unrepeatable as a fingerprint.
Recovering Abonos is a delicate operation. Divers locate and secure each trunk, lifting it gently to the surface using air balloons to avoid stress or fractures. The extreme hardness acquired over the centuries requires special cutting tools. The drying phase is just as complex, demanding long, meticulous care to preserve structural integrity.
Because of this, Abonos™ is exceptionally scarce—valued not only for its age, rarity and visual power, but also for the respect and skills required to bring it back to life. With the Wetland Collection, alcarol preserves these extraordinary surfaces by enclosing their unique live edges in a transparent resin that recalls the water that sculpted and protected them for millennia, crystallizing the moment when the trunks reemerge from their ancestral sleep.
A piece of Abonos™ is more than material: it is the silent memory of rivers and floods, climates and eras, forests and landscapes that have disappeared—an ancient story that continues in contemporary form.
