Fruit bowl (3) - Olive - Unique Olive Wood Bowls

A set of three hand-turned bowls, each shaped from a different section of olive wood salvaged from centuries-old trees felled locally in Andalusia, Spain. Sold together as a single lot — a serving bowl, a smaller deep bowl, and a wide shallow dish, each with its own grain and bark character, but united by origin and technique. A ready-made start to an olive wood collection.
Turning time: approx. Seven hours across the three pieces.
Materials and Provenance
The wood comes from olive trees grown locally in Andalusia Spain trees that have been planted from generations past. These particular trees were felled not for timber, but because they'd reached the end of their working life: no longer producing fruit, or lost to pest damage (a common issue in older Mediterranean groves). Living in a small village with no mains gas Olive Wood is used for heating. Rather than being burned or chipped, I select trunks and branches and turn them on my lathe them into all manor of individual unique iiems..
Olive wood is prized for turning because of
It's exceptionally hard and dense nature for a fruit-bearing timber, used throughout the Mediterranean for millennia.
Slow, twisting growth gives it a swirling, marbled grain — no two pieces are alike.
Colour ranges from pale honey to deep chocolate streaks within a single piece, driven by soil minerals and the tree's own stress lines.
It's naturally low porosity and is traditionally used untreated for tableware across Spain, Italy and Greece.
Technique
Each bowl is turned on a lathe with the natural bark edge left intact ("live edge" or "natural edge" turning) rather than trimmed to a perfect circle. This is technically more demanding — the blank is unbalanced on the lathe — but it preserves the true outline of the branch or trunk the piece came from, and lets the bark's natural texture and colour frame the wood.
The Three Bowls
Bowl 1 — Height 10cms
Width 23cms
Depth 6
Weight 878g swirling grain at centre.
Bowl 2 Height 9cms
Width 13cms
Depth 6cms
Weight 561g tight bark ring, even tone.
Bowl 3 Height 9cms
Width 11cms
Depth 4.5 CMS
Weight 562g shallow; pronounced dark streaking, ideal for display or serving.
Care
Hand wash only, dry promptly, feed occasionally with food-safe mineral oil to keep the grain conditioned.