The success of wood eyewear in the last four years has favoured innovation in materials. Just as we can choose different types of parquet flooring, now we can choose between different types of wood for eyewear!
Today I am going to show what I’ve found out regarding the types of wood most commonly used for eco-friendly and natural eyewear. So from now on, you can be an expert when you choose your wood eyewear!
DUMU wood or "Du Lei", as it is sometimes called, is light in colour (between beige and light grey) and comes from subtropical regions such as India or Southeast Asia. DUMU is known to be a strong material, lighter than acetate yet with highly uniform in colour. It is also known for its slight aroma.
BAMBOO wood usually comes from Southeast Asia and can be found in natural or dyed colours. Bamboo is one of the fastest growing plants in the world and is harvested only when the stems reach their greatest strength and are mature. This helps ensure that the crop will have no impact on other species that depend on bamboo for food.
EBONY is a hard, black, dense wood. It’s so heavy that it sinks in water. However, it has a very fine texture and when polished it is very, very soft. It can sometimes be found with white stripes.
As you can imagine, Zebrawood is striped! It usually has a pale golden-yellow colour and has regular or irregular dark brown or black streaks. It mainly comes from Central Africa.
Finally, Rosewood. According to Wikipedia, this is a general name by which types of wood from some tree species are known (Indian rosewood, African rosewood, jacaranda, etc.).
And what’s rosewood like? Very durable and strong, and just like DUMU it stands out for its persistent fragrance because it contains aromatic oils. Its name "rosewood" comes from its aroma. We must be very careful with Rosewood for two reasons: because there are many fake copies of Rosewood in the wood industry (the original comes from the genus Dalbergia, and copies come from other legume genera such as Machaerium scleroxylon or Pterocarpus indicus), and because Rosewood was overexploited for many years it is now endangered.
There are also many other types of wood for eyewear, like walnut, red rosewood, beech wood... If you have some other types of wood eyewear we have not mentioned, tell us!
Magda :-)
