The Piece of Wood Page
Best to be read on the first of April
All you wanted to know about the Piece of Wood
The Piece of Wood
The History
The story begins as Citroen France decides to present each new owner of a 2CV with a piece of wood. This is a first for the motor industry - no-one before world wide has ever done it. A prominent designer, Jean - Paul Clouseau, is appointed Chief Engineer (Piece of Wood) and oversees a small team dedicated to developing the innovative project. Drawings are prepared, and it is decided to make the Piece of Wood wedge shaped with a concave curve. At first this curve is circular, later an elliptical curve is developed, further refined to the final shape. It must be remembered that many aspects of the 2CV car styling reflect the Bauhaus style of Art Deco. The same is to be true of the curve intrinsic to the design of the Piece of Wood.
The design team decide which type of Wood to use. Walnut is too expensive for the main production, Lignum Vitea a little over the top, and so finally, a piece of Beech is selected. With the huge production of 2CVs then ocurring a large forest is established on the outskirts of Paris - The Citroen Piece of Wood Forest. This will ensure production has no effect on ecology in the Paris region by depletion of existing trees and hence local flooding due to raising of the water table. Two forestry workers are recruited by Citroen to oversee the Citroen Piece of Wood Forest. This works very well, each tree felled for Pieces of Wood is replaced by a new sapling - it is true ecological recycling.
To mirror the Special Editions appearing in the 2CVs and variants market on sale from time to time, the design team devises Special Edition Pieces of Wood. A beautiful Walnut version is produced. A Parana Pine version beautifully marked, is issued for a while but proves very expensive. Therefore the Parana Pine version is put on special order. Various colour scheme Special Editions appear - The Dolly Piece of Wood in a subtle mixture of two tone schemes, the Bamboo Piece of Wood (in Bamboo), the offroad version Piece of Wood specially coated in creosote. Sadly, as the end of production of the 2CV comes, so does the production of the Piece of Wood. The forest outside Paris is now overgrown, the design team dis-banded. No other car manufacturer maintains a department concerned with the production of Pieces of Wood, so they face a bleak future.
The Piece of Wood as Art
The Piece of Wood remains at the pinnacle of French artistic design. Early examples figure regularily in auctions making vast sums. The rarer examples command very, very high prices and many are believed to be kept in art collections in the Middle East. When one analyses the Piece of Wood from an artistic perspective, one can indeed see the Bauhaus influence in the subtle curves, the simplicity of form, the tyically French mastery of simplistic design.
The Piece of Wood forms a beautiful centrepiece to any scenic sculpture collection. It looks wonderful in a garden setting, mirroring the trees and ecology around it with a natural media. But it is also a practical piece of design. It has many uses, some of which are:
Doorstops to be used everwhere around the home
As an aid to golfers suffering from low ball trajectories
As a takeoff ramp for models of the British Aerospace Harrier
To temporarily be used to plug holes in leaking roofs.
To raise the edge of dinner plates in homes toppling due to subsidence.
And many, many more uses, too many to mention.
Or, of course, it can be used to prevent a 2CV from taking off down the road when one (hand-braked) front wheel is raised on the jack....
Webstyle produced NavBar
Music Player - to stop/replay use panel below
