The noted food historian, Michael W. Twitty, once referred to the pawpaw, a tree that bears America’s largest native fruit, as a “treasure tree.” This marvelous moniker is a fitting name for our new collection, a group of designs celebrating trees known for both their beauty and bounty.

Treasure trees feed us, keep us healthy, line our pockets, and protect us from the effects of climate change.Guava pays homage to the pink guava tree, the sweetest of all guava varieties. Elderberry is a paean to the Elder tree, coined by Hippocrates as nature’s medicine chest.Nickel Tree explores rare New Caledonian trees that flow with nickel-suffused sap. And Mangrovecelebrates mangrove forests, dense clusters of mangrove trees that hug coastlines to protect them from tidal surges.

Treasure Treeis inspired by the work of contemporary writers, such as Richard Powers and David George Haskell, whose prose reveals the wonders of the arboreal world. To express our concepts visually, we found ideas for composition and technique in the work of early modern art movements, including the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Vienna Secession and Fauvism.