The part of the post nobody carved
A post with a deep cross, five even notches and a bottom band worn completely smooth — where the carved part was cut once and the blank part took years of hands.
One squared post in bone white, running the full height of the back, fine vertical grain behind it all the way down.
Near the top, a saltire cross cut deep — the darkest mark on the timber. Below it, five even vertical notches in a row.
Then the bottom band, with no carving on it at all. The edges are rounded off and the surface is rubbed pale.
Why is the part with no carving the part to look at?
Because it's the only section of the post nobody made, and it took longer to arrive than everything above it.
The cross was cut with an edge tool in one sitting. The notches, probably the same one. Both are finished work: an intention, a hand, an afternoon. The smooth band is not work at all — it's the arris of a squared post rounded off by being gripped, in the same place, by enough people over enough years to take the corner off oak.
The timber carries two different clocks. One records a decision; the other records traffic, and nobody producing it was trying to produce anything.
What are the five notches counting?
Five of something. The post declines to say what.
They're even, vertical, consistent in depth and evenly spaced — the geometry of a tally rather than an ornament. That even spacing points at one hand in one sitting; a count accumulated over time tends to wander.
What isn't recorded is the unit. Five years, five occupants, five of anything — the number survived and the noun didn't. A row of deliberate burns worked into timber lands in the same condition: the count legible, the subject gone.
Why put the mark on a post rather than on something hung beside the fire?
Because a post holds the roof up, and a hanging object comes down when the room is cleared.
The choice of surface is the decision. Whoever cut the cross put it into a load-bearing member, on the timber standing beside the fire — one of the small number of places a house is open. Removing the mark would mean taking out structure.
It also settles the format. A post has one orientation and the print accepts it, running floor to ceiling down the back: no crop to a square, no scene around it.
Why is the cross cut so much deeper than the notches?
Because the effort went where the timber was thickest, and the depth is legible as effort.
The saltire reads darkest on the print because it is cut furthest in — enough passes with the tool that the shadow inside the groove goes solid. The notches beside it are shallower and lighter. That difference isn't stylistic; it's a record of how long each mark took, preserved in the wood as contrast.
How does depth carry meaning at a glance?
A deeper cut holds more shadow, so it renders darker, so the eye ranks it first.
The three-band read comes straight out of that: one deep mark, five even ones, then nothing. The sequence sorts itself by effort before a viewer has decided to interpret anything, in the way a six-petal figure struck with compasses declares its own construction.
Who owns a mark cut into wood?
Nobody. A saltire is two crossed lines, a notch is a notch, and both were drawn for this print.
Nothing here is traced from a surviving timber, transcribed from a real inscription or copied from a published record. What does carry an owner is exactly that kind of record — a photograph of a particular beam, a measured drawing in a survey, somebody's transcription. Those belong to whoever made them, and licensing one is ordinary and doable when a specific piece of timber is the point.
Style has no owner. A work does. The manner — bone on olive, grain behind, marks in negative — is free. A specific published drawing made that way is not.
What about somebody who says it's just some scratches on a beam?
Depth of cut and spacing rule out scratches, on measurable grounds.
Accidental damage on a working post is various: different depths, different angles, scattered heights. What's drawn here is one deep symmetrical figure and five parallel strokes at matched depth and even spacing, well above hand height. That is tooled work, and the evenness is the evidence.
The rubbed band underneath can't be argued with either way — nobody wears a corner smooth by accident and nobody does it on purpose. It's the sum of a great many ordinary mornings, sitting directly under a mark that took one.
Does it print well?
Yes, and the fine grain is the one thing carrying risk.
The design is one ink: bone white on deep olive, the cross and the notches printed as gaps where the shirt colour comes through. That negative treatment keeps the deepest cuts the darkest thing on the garment without a second colour. Fine vertical grain is exactly what the weave eats, so it wants to be drawn coarser and further apart than real oak and allowed to break up rather than sit as a solid field. The post's own silhouette is the print's edge — a squared shape with rounded top corners and a softened bottom band, not a ruled rectangle laid around the artwork.
How do I get one made?
Describe the timber at JustOG — what's cut into it, how many marks and where the wear sits. Pick a direction, drag the crop frame, see it composited on the real garment, and it's made to order and shipped.
Designs other people have published are in the shop.
Five notches, one cross, and a hand-width of oak that no tool ever touched.