What Is It?: Monkeypod Wood

At the Ravenswood Fellowship United Methodist rummage sale this weekend, Jenn and I found these nice wooden bowls. If you’re a collector of Danish Modern or teak but don’t quite have the budget to furnish your table with vintage Dansk wooden serving sets, these bowls are easy to find on eBay or Etsy and are always much cheaper than vintage Dansk and have very similar shapes, colors and functions.

So what is this unique wood? Monkeypod! (It’s even more fun to say than Dansk.)

The wood comes from a South Asian tree and was extremely popular in the 1970’s. If anyone went on honeymoon to Hawaii before 1980, they probably came home with at least a few Monkeypod wood serving bowls. (After 1980 they came home with ugly rainbow ceramic trivets with the word Hawaii written on them.)

So it’s plentiful, cheap and it looks great.