Tetraclinis articulata · Essaouira, Morocco

A hundred years
underground

Thuya burl forms in the root of a tree that grows in one corner of Morocco. Cut by hand in Essaouira. One batch, and no two of them have ever matched.

Shop the collection See how it's made

Batch: 01
Available: 26
Designs: 6

Five thuya burl dice holders side by side on a dark ground, lids off, a brass fountain pen alongside for scale

Thuya burl · root, not trunk

Ships from the USA

Dispatched within 3–7 business days, tracked, with no customs step at your end. Shipping is free over $95.

30-day returns

Live with the grain and the cedar smell of it for a month. If it is not right, send it back — see shipping & returns.

Handmade in Essaouira

Cut, turned and inlaid by hand in the Moroccan coastal town where the craft has been worked for generations.

Macro view of polished thuya burl, showing the swirled eyes and dark resin veins that only form in the root

The material

It grows underground, and it never grows twice.

Thuya burl is cut from the root of Tetraclinis articulata, a conifer that grows in one corner of Morocco and nowhere else on earth. The burl forms where the root answers drought and injury — it thickens into knots and whorls instead of straight grain.

That is why the figure never repeats. It is also why it cannot be farmed to order: the pattern is a record of one tree's particular decades, and there is no second copy of it anywhere.

Root, not trunk

The burl is the knotted growth at the base of the tree, below the ground line.

Oiled, not lacquered

The cedar smell is the wood's own resin, not a finish applied over it.

The collection

Every piece is photographed, measured and priced on its own. Where a design shows more than one available, those are separate objects with separate grain.