Found this in Florence Italy - What is it?

[Ted Reischl]

Looks like walnut to me.

For the gentleman from Texas who said the walnut he has seen is hard and impossible to carve:

Definitely not my experience. Walnut carves very well and holds fine detail. Not sure what you are getting?

[Brian Holcombe]

Same experience and I would tend to think if these are original then they were able to source fantastic European walnut, they had not run out of walnut yet at that point. IIRC the big transition from walnut to mahogany was due to availability, they had a new source of wonderful material to supply the European cabinet makers in the 18th century.

[Tom Jones III]

I'm betting the European walnut must be very different than American. Same is true for English oak, I would never try and carve American oak but English oak is a famous carving wood. I'll talk to my lumberyard and see if they can get a small amount of European walnut.

[Brian Holcombe]

Not so much, it's quite similar but slightly lighter (in color) and a little easier still to work.

[Tom Jones III]

Could this be butternut?

[Brian Holcombe]

Malcolm brought up cedar/cypress in your other version of this thread. I think that is the most likely wood. It's certainly finer than walnut, very tightly grained and darkens up considerably over time. It's also commonly used for very large doors.

Mahogony is not the easiest wood to acquire in huge perfectly straight sections, though that may not have been the case at the time. Walnut is also something rare in door quality large straight grained rift sections. Walnut kills the surrounding foliage and so it typically branches out lower than trees which are more accustomed to growing very close to one another.

This is in direct contrast to my above post but his post sparked my thought process.

[Mel Fulks]

Could be. But I don't think either would carve as well as birch or stand up to wear (not weather) as well. I think it's got to be something pretty hard since it's not full of dings.