The Tree Ring Pen (US Patent 7467904).

Imagine a fine writing instrument that commemorates personal and historic anniversaries, displays a century of natural history from western forests, and helps protect 300-year old trees from fire.  Envision a pen that remembers your legacy and commemorates our history, while restoring an old-growth forest. The Tree Ring Pen embodies and accomplishes these ideals.

Trees grow outward from the center, each year adding a new ring of wood onto the prior year’s growth. Tree Ring Pens are crafted from trees 100 plus years of age that are harvested during forest restoration projects. The annual growth rings in the pen show events that shaped individual trees, forests, and western North America.  Photographs of the forest restoration projects associated with the Tree Ring Pens are displayed at the top of this page.

Each pen has all the qualities that one seeks in a fine writing instrument- beauty, practicality, durability, and most important meaning. Nature’s story is shown in every marking. Each year of special significance inscribed on the pen (e.g. birth, wedding anniversary) corresponds exactly to the year the wood formed in the tree that became the pen, making it the perfect gift. The dated wood offers us a connection that transcends beyond the hand and pen to a past place and time. The tree ring pen marks the nexus of history, science, forest restoration, and art, creating a pen of meaning and character.

You can learn more about how Tree Ring Pens help protect and restore old-growth forests at http://www.treeringpens.com/restoration.php.