Wood floats

Wood floats. It's a simple principle with a more detailed scientific explanation available. It's also the genesis of every successful mercantile fleet that has ever taken to the sea. These two pawns come from opposite ends of the earth - tiny floating splinters from two great trading empires. The one was a spar fished out of a Venetian canal; the other a fallen flagstaff on Miyajima Island, Japan. Much travelled, smartly turned, well seasoned, both are now brothers in arms facing their new foes across a wooden chessboard in Johannesburg. How did that happen?

From ruler to ruled

A branch, recently fallen, picked up underneath a eucalyptus tree outside the Jan Smuts cottage at Irene. Given that the photographic evidence shows the koppie upon which the house is constructed (an old officers' mess, transported from Middelburg) was completely barren when Smuts moved in (in 1908), that he planted all the trees himself and that the mother tree of this branch (the rings indicate an age of over 30 for the branch) must be all of 50m tall and 100 years old – then this pawn came from Smuts’s hands.

8 A note from the past

In 1902 Bansall & Sons of London built an overstrung, underdamped upright piano action within a walnut casing - a small part of which fell loose when it was moved 109 years later.

7 White Smoke

We have white smoke. The Bishop of Frodsham emerges from the classroom.

7 From Woodwork to Divinity

A familiar journey from one lesson to the next, another shiny faced schoolboy drags himself across the quad.

6 From the woodwork teacher's stockroom

Over a hundred years of leaky pens, blotting paper darts and penknife graffiti are going into the manufacture of this latest piece. Will it survive its next set of cuts as delicate as any Amsterdam diamond cleaver's?

5 down, Dark Sovereign

Ruler fashioned from a bough fallen in Houghton (4,9)

4 A tree falls, long live the King

When a tree falls alone in the forest does it make a sound? The base wood for this king was retrieved from outside Nelson Mandela's home in Houghton, Johannesburg shortly after he returned there from hospital in January 2011.

3 A pawn from home

This white pawn once formed the ceiling in a childhood bedroom. Its next move opens a new chapter in an old story.

2 A white rook escapes the Falls

The first white rook was rescued from splintered oblivion on the lip of the Victoria Falls. One fate avoided, another to come.

1 A black pawn from the river

The first black pawn comes from a loose portion of the deck of the Zambezi River ferry that plies between Zambia and Zimbabwe. Interestingly what I thought was just dirty common pine or meranti is either mopane or ironwood – the entire deck from that dilapidated pontoon would be worth half a million in a Sandton furnishers!

0 An empty board...

Sixty-four empty squares. Thirty-two need to be filled by wooden chess pieces. Every piece a story in discarded wood. Each one hand turned in a garage in Johannesburg. Watch this space - piece by piece.