The wood of every fine antique cabinet. The wood Chippendale built a furniture vocabulary out of in 1750s London. The wood the back of a Martin guitar is built from. Honduran mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) is the genuine article — fine-grained, dimensionally stable, deep reddish-brown that ages to a richer color, takes a French polish like nothing else, carves cleanly in any direction. The wood of the Caribbean and Central American canopy. Heavily over-harvested through the 20th century; protected under CITES Appendix II since 2003, which means responsibly-sourced FSC-certified mahogany is the only version a designer should specify. African mahogany (Khaya), Philippine mahogany (Shorea — actually a meranti), and the various 'mahoganies' that aren't really mahogany are alternatives but read differently. Buy from Rockler / Woodcraft, from premium specialty hardwood dealers (Hardwoods Inc, World Timber).
Swietenia macrophylla, family Meliaceae. Density 540–650 kg/m³ (12 percent MC). Modulus of rupture 75–90 MPa. Modulus of elasticity 9.5–11.5 GPa. Compression parallel to grain 45–52 MPa. Shrinkage radial 3.0 percent / tangential 4.5 percent (very low — exceptional dimensional stability, the cabinet-wood property). Janka hardness ~3700 N (830 lbf). Color: heartwood pinkish-brown freshly cut, deepening to medium reddish-brown over years; sapwood pale yellow-white. Grain typically straight but interlocked grain is common (the property responsible for the famous ribbon-stripe figure on quartersawn mahogany). Texture medium, uniform. Works exceptionally well — sands cleanly, carves at any angle, takes a high polish, glues without surface treatment, fasteners hold well. The traditional French-polish finish (shellac applied with a fad in many thin coats) was developed for mahogany furniture and reads best on this wood.
Fashionable furniture of the eighteenth century was dominated by the use of mahogany.
Principled BSDF defaults derived from the sphere woodgrain finish. Reasonable seed for Blender, Substance, Keyshot, Rhino — tune per material. Or grab the whole library at once: ForMaterials library →
# finish: woodgrain albedo #6b3520 metallic 0.00 roughness 0.60 ior 1.45 transmission 0.00 clearcoat 0.00 sheen 0.00 anisotropic 0.60
{
"albedo": "#6b3520",
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.6,
"ior": 1.45,
"transmission": 0.0,
"clearcoat": 0.0,
"sheen": 0.0,
"anisotropic": 0.6
}
# Blender 4.x — Principled BSDF
# Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla, Honduran / South American) · finish: woodgrain
import bpy
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="mat_mahogany_honduran")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
bsdf.inputs["Base Color"].default_value = (0.147, 0.0356, 0.0144, 1.0)
bsdf.inputs["Metallic"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 0.600
bsdf.inputs["IOR"].default_value = 1.450
bsdf.inputs["Transmission Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Coat Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Sheen Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Anisotropic"].default_value = 0.600
# KeyShot 11+ — lux Python API, Generic material
# Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla, Honduran / South American) · finish: woodgrain
# Run from Window → Scripting Console
import lux
mat = lux.createMaterial(name="mat_mahogany_honduran", materialType="Generic")
mat.setProperty("diffuse", (107, 53, 32)) # 8-bit sRGB
mat.setProperty("metallic", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("roughness", 0.600)
mat.setProperty("indexOfRefraction", 1.450)
mat.setProperty("transparency", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("coatingWeight", 0.000)
{
"_format": "Substance Designer / Painter \u2014 pbrMetalRough constants",
"_about": "Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla, Honduran / South American) \u00b7 finish: woodgrain",
"baseColor": {
"r": 0.147,
"g": 0.0356,
"b": 0.0144
},
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.6,
"ior": 1.45,
"opacity": 1.0,
"anisotropyLevel": 0.6,
"_notes": "Channels listed are the standard Substance pbrMetalRough output. Drop into a Uniform Color node per channel, or as the constant input on a layered stack."
}{
"asset": {
"version": "2.0",
"generator": "ForMatter"
},
"materials": [
{
"name": "mat_mahogany_honduran",
"pbrMetallicRoughness": {
"baseColorFactor": [
0.147,
0.0356,
0.0144,
1.0
],
"metallicFactor": 0.0,
"roughnessFactor": 0.6
},
"extensions": {
"KHR_materials_ior": {
"ior": 1.45
}
}
}
]
}# USD Preview Surface — UsdShade.MaterialLook prim attributes
# Mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla, Honduran / South American) · finish: woodgrain
def Material "mat_mahogany_honduran" {
token outputs:surface.connect = </mat_mahogany_honduran/PreviewSurface.outputs:surface>
def Shader "PreviewSurface" {
uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.147, 0.0356, 0.0144)
float inputs:metallic = 0.000
float inputs:roughness = 0.600
float inputs:ior = 1.450
float inputs:opacity = 1.000
float inputs:clearcoat = 0.000
token outputs:surface
}
}
The traditional fine-furniture and boat-building wood. Mills like a slightly softer oak — even grain, predictable feed, takes a beautiful finish. CITES-listed; verify chain-of-custody before sourcing.
Onsrud Cutter hardwood feeds & speeds; USDA Forest Products Lab Honduran Mahogany machining notes; CITES Appendix II compliance for *Swietenia macrophylla*.
→ try this material in swarfUSDA Forest Products Lab Wood Handbook, Honduran Mahogany; CITES Appendix II compliance for *Swietenia macrophylla*.
Carved mahogany. An 18th-century inscription on a chair in the set reads 'pedistals for Chipendel's Backs'; timber quality suggests northwest England manufacture.
John Townsend, Newport, Rhode Island; mahogany with chestnut and tulip poplar secondary woods, block-and-shell facade.
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.
Local to this browser. No cloud, no account, no telemetry.