Sugar maple palettes carefully gathered from Beam Paint family’s sugar bush, the place where they make maple syrup. These small pieces of wood come from the magical inaatig in our ojibwe language or acer saccharum in latin, finally sugar maple in english. Every spring Beam Paint taps hundreds of these trees when the nights are freezing but the day is above zero and the sun is shining. It’s a time of getting together, hard work, and family. It doesn’t hurt the tree and this same acreage they live on has been caretaken by their families since and before the treaties of their area were signed. It takes 40 litres of sap to make one litre of maple syrup!
Part of caring for the trees is carefully removing some dry branches, these palettes are made from those offcuts. Beam Paints has always loved the strength and feeling of them, like a living stone.