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Tom Harlan's American Chestnut Clock

The wood has been functionally extinct since 1950. The tree on your wall was alive during the Civil War. $99 direct from Wytheville, Virginia.

The wood no longer exists in American forests

The rings on the face stop at the year the blight killed the tree: you can see the last one, the thinnest

Every clock ships with a card: the year the tree was born, the year it died, the year the blight arrived in that county

Marine-grade epoxy, three coats, hand-sanded: the same chemistry used on boat hulls—It will not yellow or crack in 40 years

German Hermle silent sweep movement—no tick, no click, accurate to 30 seconds per year

$10 from every clock goes to the American Chestnut Foundation's breeding program

🔒 Secure payment | 📦 Delivery 2 to 5 days | ↩️ 30-day refund

The Only Material in American Home Goods That No Longer Exists

American Chestnut has been functionally extinct as a forest tree since 1950. A fungal pathogen arrived from Asia in 1904, spread southwest along the Appalachian range at fifty miles per year, and killed four billion trees in less than fifty years. The stumps are still there. Every spring they send up new shoots. The blight finds them and kills them back before they can grow. They have been trying to come back for eighty years.

• One in every four trees east of the Mississippi was an American Chestnut before 1904—the dominant hardwood of the entire Appalachian range

• There is no commercial supply of this wood, there are no suppliers, there is no way to order it

• The only pre-blight chestnut that still exists is in the structures built from it before the fungus arrived—barns, farmhouses, tobacco sheds across Appalachia

• When those structures come down, the wood goes to dumpsters and burn piles unless someone is paying attention

• Tom Harlan has been paying attention for 14 years—pulling chestnut from collapsing structures before demolition crews arrive, running lab verification on every new timber source

• The clock face on your wall would otherwise be landfill

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A Face You Can Actually Read

Every clock face is a cross-section cut perpendicular to the grain—the full record of the tree's life in concentric rings. Wide rings from good years. Narrow rings from hard ones. And at the outer edge, a final compressed ring from the last year the tree drew sap.

• The last ring is the thinnest: the tree weakening as the blight reached it

• The two or three rings before it are already narrowing: the tree felt it coming before it died

• Tom's card tells you the year each ring stopped: the tree in your clock was probably born in the 1840s and died when the blight reached its county in the late 1930s

• It lived through the Civil War, both World Wars, and the Great Depression: the rings recorded all of it

• Tom spends an hour researching the blight's spread pattern for each county before writing the card: every card is specific to that tree, that county, that year

• No other clock on any wall anywhere carries this record

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Built to Last as Long as the Wood Already Has

The chestnut timber in Tom's clocks has been standing in Appalachian barns for over a century, preserved by its own tannin content. The clock is built to match that standard.

• Marine-grade optically clear epoxy, three coats, hand-sanded between each: the same chemistry used in boat hull finishing, designed for continuous UV exposure

• The rings you see now will look exactly like this in forty years: the epoxy does not yellow, does not crack, does not dull

• German Hermle silent sweep movement: continuous sweep hands, no tick, no click, no sound

• Accurate to 30 seconds per year

• Brass numerals and hands individually set by Tom before every clock ships

• The movement can be replaced in 20 years if needed: the face cannot. The face is the point

What Happens When You Hang It and Read the Card

You hang it and it reads as a clock, and then you look closer.

The rings are not decoration—they are a record, legible once you know what you're looking at. The wide ones are good years: enough rain, enough sun, enough growing season. The narrow ones are hard years: drought, cold, competition from neighboring trees. And then, near the outer edge, the rings start compressing (tighter and tighter, the tree weakening) and then there is one final ring, the thinnest of all, and after that nothing.

You read Tom's card.

The tree was born in 1843. It died in 1938 when the blight reached Wythe County. It lived 95 years and recorded all of them on its face and now that face is on your wall keeping time, which is the one thing it could not do for itself. You will look at the last ring differently after you know what stopped it. Everyone who stands in front of this clock and learns what they're looking at does.

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The Wood His Grandfather Mourned for 60 Years…

Tom Harlan grew up hearing his grandfather Earl describe watching the blight move through Wythe County when he was a teenager, the great gray spires of dead trees appearing on the ridgelines, year by year, spreading southwest. Earl talked about it his whole life and died in 1998 without ever stopping.

Tom became a barn salvager in his forties, learning to read timber the way Earl had described the chestnuts: by grain, by color, by what it looked like against everything else.

In 2012 he pulled a beam from a 1921 Grayson County barn, sent a sample to Virginia Tech, and got back a lab report that said Castanea dentata. He sat in the parking lot and called his mother. She cried. He has been sourcing and making these clocks ever since—14 years, one collapsing structure at a time, running lab verification on every new timber source, writing every clock card himself at his kitchen table the evening before it ships.

A Roanoke retail chain offered him $64 per clock to carry them across eight stores. They asked for volume and suggested substituting cheaper wood when chestnut ran out. He said no before the meeting was over. He ships at $99 direct from Wytheville. When the wood runs out, he stops.

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What Those Who Already Received Theirs Have To Say

Thomas W., Burlington, Vermont ✓ Verified buyer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"I teach Appalachian history. I have a classroom full of objects that represent the region's past. This clock is the most precise of all of them. The rings stop at 1939. Every student who stands in front of it and learns what they're looking at understands the blight differently than they did from a textbook. History in wood is different from history in ink."

Marcus G., San Francisco, California ✓ Verified buyer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"I'm an engineer. I bought this for the material science — pre-blight chestnut preserved for eighty years is genuinely rare and the epoxy application is technically excellent. Then I read the card. The tree was born in 1849. It died in 1937 from a fungus that arrived on a plant shipped from the other side of the world. I have read that card 4 times."

Laurence C., Seattle, Washington ✓ Verified buyer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"The tree was born in 1843 and died in 1936 when the blight reached our county. My grandmother would have known what it was without the card. I hung it in the room where she used to sit. She would have cried."

Sonia B., Columbus, Ohio ✓ Verified buyer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

"My daughter asked why the lines were different sizes. I told her about the good years and the hard years and the year the tree stopped growing. She thought about it and said: 'So it's still here.' She's right."

47 clocks: When the wood runs out, Tom stops

He is working on a 1917 tobacco barn in Patrick County with chestnut framing—it won't be ready until late 2026 at the earliest. There is no other source confirmed. Restoration Hardware sells live-edge wood clocks at $349. Artisan makers average $249 to $429.

None of them are working with American Chestnut because there is no supply chain for it. There are only collapsing Appalachian barns and one man who knows what to look for inside them. Tom set his price at $99 direct so what his grandfather mourned for 60 years ends up on American walls instead of in a dumpster.

Every clock ships in 5 business days from Wytheville, padded in kraft paper, with a card Tom wrote the night before.

30-day return for any reason, return shipping covered.

$10 from every clock goes to the American Chestnut Foundation.

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Easy returns and exchanges

Returns and exchanges accepted within 30 days of reception.

Customer service that listens

Our team is available to answer all your questions about your order.

Fast and secure delivery

Delivery within 2 to 5 business days, direct to your door.

100% secure online payment

Secure payment by credit card or PayPal.

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