此物最相思
The Love Seeds


The verse is part of a poem written by a famous China poet, 王维(Wang Wei) - Red Seeds. The poem was about the seeds of a kind of tree which grown in the southern part of China.



The seeds are bright red and small that look like little hearts. Thus its nickname, love seeds. In the poem, it tells us to pick and keep the seeds for they represent the thoughts and love that someone has for us.

I am glad that I live in Singapore, a country that can be considered as located in the south . The good news is we have the 'love trees' on this tropical island. Hooray!

This piece of artwork is my boyfriend's favourite. The idea of having the carving framed up with the depth allowing some love seeds to be displayed makes it so special. There used to be a big old 'love tree' near the main entrance of the my school when I was young. Some of the love seeds I picked during then are still with me! However, many of those have turned into dark red due to age, almost like burnt seeds. The ones in this frame were from Botanic Garden when I visited there two years ago. I put nine of them because 'nine'(九) to chinese, sounds the same as 久, which means for a l - - o - - n - - g time!

The wood came from a piece of discarded junk wood. Boy, it really took me a while to study its grain to decide which part of it I wanted to use. Watch the photo closely and you will find that the first two characters, which means 'these thing', are on the grain that is pointing to the seeds! Cool huh.
Hmm...I have to say carving this one was a challenge as the characters were small and the having some of the strokes that fine - especially that third character, I had to be very very careful not to cause any 'diaster'. Whew!