The Wheel of the Year: A Hand Made, Pyrography, Worship of Nature.

Approx 32cm x 32cm and 3cm deep. Comes with a wooden stand.

She began as a birch, the Lady of the Woods, the tree our ancestors turned to when they wanted to begin again. Beith, the tree of new starts.

Which is perfect for a piece of art that holds the entire year... a year that always ends and yet always begins again.

This slice still wears her own bark, marked with every shape created from standing through her many winters, wet summers, hard frosts, the good years and the difficult ones... she kept a record.

The hand-engraving celebrates the full cycle from deepest Winter when we hide away with warm mugs in the retreat of our own homes. To the first green hope of Imbolc, the balance points of the Equinoxes, the long hot days of high Summer. The first harvest, the last harvest, the decay of what was, the letting go. And the promise that the darkness is not forever; it is just a womb.

Pyrography is not forgiving.

There is no undo, no delete, no starting the section again; there's just the hot nib and the wood underneath it with its own personality. Burn too deep, and it is ruined, rush a line and it is ruined. The wood decides how fast I can engrave and I learned, quite quickly, to stop arguing with it... just like the seasons.

So this piece truly was made in the only way it could be made; slowly, line by line, breath held, until the eight pagan festivals came together, the memory of this tree, honoured.

The bark and the back are sealed with an environmentally friendly varnish, but the face of her I left bare.

I could not bring myself to put a barrier between your hand and the wood because you should be able to run your fingers across the grain and feel the texture of this piece. This is nature worship you can touch, an altar piece that wants to be felt, not only admired.

No two birch slices are the same shape. This exact wheel, on this exact tree, does not exist anywhere else and never will again.

✶ Move with the Moon and seasons ✶