活动名称：木艺木趣国际研讨会暨展览会
时间地点：2011年10月19日，印度班加罗尔J N Tata多功能礼堂
演讲嘉宾：Michael Grabner

摘要：Much of the knowledge of the utilization and the properties of wood as raw material began to get lost with the onset of the industrialisation. As a result old traditions of handicraft-men –important intangible cultural properties – are disappearing nowadays. This loss of knowledge was described for the first time at the beginning of the 20th century by a folklorist (Blau 1917) working in Bohemia. He mentioned that this knowledge starts to retreat to higher altitudes of forest lands, where the forests are the main focus of life.

Blau (1917) described, that within a single farming house 12 different wood species were found in Carinthia and even 27 in Bohemia. These findings underline the high diversity of wood utilization in former times.

By studying old books the description of properties and applications of various wood species can be found. The reasons for the selection of a species are usually not given. To bridge this gap of knowledge, we started to study historical wood utilization at collections of wooden artefacts like buildings, tools, machines, household appliances, furniture and so on. The aim is to set up a database of wooden goods where a description of the artefact itself, its geographic region, age and the wood species are linked. Groups of related applications mainly defined by different requirements are formed. These requirements can be directly linked to wood properties.

First results show, that within the small region of the mountain Schneeberg, 32 different wood species including nine shrubs (mainly for highly specialised products as the rungs of a ladder) were in use.

Understanding historical wood utilization will help to use our forests more efficiently – primarily in times of shortage of wood as raw material.

关键词：Historical wood utilization, wood quality, wood identification

Michael Grabner, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, BOKU Vienna, Peter Jordan Strasse 82, A-1190 Vienna, Austria.