Mango Wood Furniture - What Is It? Where Does It Come From?

Preferring a warm climate which is free from frost, the tree is most notably grown in Asia and South America, mainly for its fruit.
Mango fruit trees are a fast growing, large tree which have been known to grow to over one hundred feet tall and up to a diameter of five feet. This long lived evergreen flowers in small, white bunches and has leaves which start off orange in colour then turn through red to green as they mature. The fruit takes between three and six months to ripen and is very popular in Asian and Indian cuisine.
Although long lived, mango trees stop producing fruit as the age so is felled regularly to allow space for new plantations. At the end of its fruit-bearing life, rather than being wasted, the tree is then used to produce timber for use in furniture, kitchen equipment and decorative carvings. Already a very popular timber wood in much of Asia, the beautiful mango wood is becoming more and more popular the world over.
A hard timber with a beautiful dense grain, the wood of the mango tree is surprisingly light compared to most other hardwoods. The stunning grain of the mango wood is usually a mid-brown colour, often with a streaked appearance featuring other colours including greens, light tans and greys. Usually finished with a natural product, the grain looks best with beeswax applied and has a rustic, patterned look that gets better and better as it ages.
Mango wood is especially notable for its use in both rustically styled and more modern furniture and carvings as it is a lot easier to cut than tougher hardwoods such as mahogany or teak and looks especially beautiful when used for turnings or in large flat panels which allow the full range of colours present in the grain to show through.
As the mango timber comes from a tree which is grown primarily for its fruit, the wood is actually a recycled waste by-product. The perpetual turnover of these large trees means that mango wood is an extremely sustainable and ecologically sound material for furniture production. It would be extremely wasteful to not use such a beautiful timber and so the mango farmers sell on this wood to local woodworkers to subsidize their income.
Most mango wood products found in western countries are fair trade items. This means the highly skilled craftsmen that produce the furniture, as well as the farmers that grow the wood, are paid a fair price for their produce. As the cost of living in India is substantially lower than that of the UK and US, added to the recycled nature of the timber, means that furniture and decorative items produced from this versatile wood are not only affordable but also provide a good living for the traditional craftsmen and farmers whose hard work produces them.

By: Matthew Evans

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Want to find out more about Mango Furniture, then visit www.mango-furniture.org.uk on how to choose the best Mango Wood Furniture for your needs.