the golden-brown heartwood arrives not as raw material but as possibility, its grey-to-black veining already suggesting the furniture forms that Blowing Rock's artisans will coax from each sheet. Where Bloomington's workshops prize consistency across institutional runs, the craftspeople here select for drama — choosing flitches where the dark figuring streams most boldly against the pale sapwood, matching leaves so the streaks mirror one another across a tabletop like the ridgeline shadows that shift across Grandfather Mountain at dusk. This is veneer that rewards the patient eye, its color deepening with age into richer amber tones that settle into these mountain homes as though they had always been there. And when those same makers begin sending finished pieces down through the foothills toward the design showrooms of Bluffton, the Black Limba travels with them, carrying