The Newbridge Bog Oak Collection is an limited range of elegant pendants and earrings all cut from the same piece of 3,000 year old Bog Oak recovered from ancient Bog land near the town of Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland.
There was a time when the climate in Ireland was warmer and drier providing an ideal environment for Oak, Ash and Yew trees to grow and flourish for many thousands of years. About 10,000 years ago there was a gradual climate shift to a wetter, damper period. Sea levels rose resulting in wetlands and rivers flooding and these majestic giants that once towered along the ancient Irish skyline started to lose their firm rooted anchors, eventually falling down into softened soil below where the famous Bogs of Ireland were forming. The acidic and anaerobic, or airless, conditions of the Bogs preserved the wood and stained it a dark brown or black as the Oaks tannin were slowly dissolved by the acidic environment in which the lay. Bog Oak captures the wood in its early stages of fossilisation, each one is a slice of time.
Irish Bog Oak typically dates from 900BC to over 6000BC, that’s about 3,000 to 8,000 years old. During that period Ireland saw the arrival of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, the development of agriculture and the entire Bronze Age. When this Newbridge Bog Oak was growing the Egyptian Pyramids were in full construction, Sparta was founded and King David was making history in Israel.
Big Oak can be a very hard material with densely packed growth rings that give a lovely symmetrical pattern and are very tactile when sanded and polished to a very high standard. These pendants extend from the heart of the wood, the oldest part, out to a once live edge where wood meets contemporary pigmented resin. They really are a slice of time from this moment reaching back thousands of years.
This limited collection contains pendants and earrings are cut without any templates or measurements so you can be guaranteed that each one is absolutely unique, no-one will be wearing the same piece as yours.
Since each pendant is cut from the same piece of wood they are a wonderful gift for groups like mothers and daughters, bridesmaids, sports teams or co-workers where you want to give something that is as unique as the individual but want to celebrate your common connections, whatever they may be.
Click here to find out more about the source of this Bog Oak. Conor Lane is a Bog Oak sculptor from Newbridge and an expert in handling this precious material.
Find my entire range of Bog Oak pendants, earrings and more in my store.