Planks of ancient morta wood - the older the wood, the darker the plank.

The Age Collection

To accompany The Age Collection, a rare, handcrafted, limited edition set of Royal Salute whisky blends available for collectors. Studio Mackereth designed a bespoke wooden presentation plinth carved from rare 8000-year-old oak.

Having previously collaborated with Royal Salute to create the Neolithic bar, which has been touring the world since its debut in Milan in 2015, both the bar and plinth are crafted from this hard-to-find material, which is formed when oak trees become buried in waterlogged soil for thousands of years. Its shade denotes its age – the darker it is, the older it is. And just as Royal Salute whisky is matured slowly in oak barrels, this naturally preserved material available in very limited quantities, is the perfect way to highlight the craft of the whisky blends.

Date: 2016

Client: Royal Salute for Pernod Ricard

Photographer: Adrian Lambert

Early sketches showing the idea for the plinth and its relationship to time.
One of the many bespoke tools the craftsmen created for this unique project.
A cross section of the plinth, showing the gradual transition in age, with 8,000 year old black wood at the front fading through the millenia to a paler brown.
When the tree that provided this fell into a passing river, the North Sea was dry land, the Sahara was a lush, cattle-grazing pasture and the ancient Egyptians farming the Nile Delta.
Stephen Armstrong, Journalist