Chinese toon (Toona sinensis) is more familiar as the tree whose new spring shoots are eaten as greens. As a timber, Chinese toon belongs to the mahogany family, Meliaceae, and is distinguished by its subtly reddish brown color. It has long been used for furniture and soban, traditional Korean dining tables.
Sawn into boards: waves
People seeing Chinese toon boards for the first time usually remark on how pronounced the grain is. From a distance, the figure appears as overlapping waves flowing across the surface; up close, each dark stripe is densely dotted with tiny pores. These are the vessels through which water moved inside the tree.
Cut into rounds: growth rings
When the same wood is cut across the grain, those dark stripes become concentric lines. Because the vessels are arranged along the growth-ring boundaries, the pattern seen in a board and the growth rings seen in a round slice are the same structure viewed from different directions.
A hollow tree
Some Chinese toon trees naturally hollow out at the center as they grow. Unlike a hole drilled by hand, the edges remain stained red and retain their uneven texture. The wood is sometimes filled with resin to make tabletops or plates, or hung on a wall as an object just as it is.
The shape of the branches, preserved
When the point where branches divide is sawn without discarding its natural form, it becomes a Y-shaped sculptural piece. It works well as a shelf bracket or wall object. In a rounded wooden dowel, the grain runs lengthwise in long, continuous lines.
After finishing
Chinese toon in its unfinished state is a subdued reddish brown, but oil brings greater depth to the color and makes the contrast in the grain stand out more clearly. That is why it is often described as a wood whose true value emerges after finishing.
Woodway still has more than 100 Chinese toon boards, round slices, and logs. Every piece is one of a kind, so the same shape will never appear again.
Photos: Woodway Smart Store product photos (October 2026). For the story of how the Chinese toon logs arrived, see “Hongseong: The Winter Chinese Toon Trees Were Cut.”
