Reihax product

DEIN TEXT HIER

Name: DEIN TEXT HIER: an intarsia pen holder with your own text
Brand: Reihax

An intarsia pen holder that says whatever you want: a name, a motto, a date. No print and no engraving. Every letter is an inlaid piece of wood, and you design the text in the editor on CherryCut.

Visualisation of the DEIN TEXT HIER pen holder: a red-brown wooden box with light inlaid text and waves on the side, with pens — What your pen holder could look like: three lines of text as a light inlay in dark wood, with waves on the sides.

What DEIN TEXT HIER is

DEIN TEXT HIER, German for "your text here", is the Reihax pen holder whose lettering you decide. The box measures about 10 × 10 cm and stands 11 cm tall, and like every Reihax pen holder it is made as intarsia in real wood veneer. Your text goes on the front; waves of two woods run along the sides, much as on THINK BIGGER.

The text is not printed and not burnt in. Every letter is its own piece of wood, inlaid into the surrounding surface. So the lettering lies flush with the surface, has the grain and colour of real wood, and lasts as long as the wood itself.

What inlaid lettering looks like in real life

The pictures of DEIN TEXT HIER on this page are visualisations, because every piece carries a different text. How inlaid lettering looks on a finished Reihax piece is shown by the pen holders that are already built with fixed lettering:

THINK BIGGER pen holder in wenge with inlaid lettering in light oak — THINK BIGGER in wenge/oak: the letters are light oak, inlaid into dark wenge.

Up close you can see that every edge of a letter is a joint between two woods, and that every letter shows the grain of its own wood instead of being a layer of paint. On FOCUS in mahogany/ash it is the light ash that lies as lettering in the warm mahogany surface.

FOCUS pen holder in mahogany with inlaid lettering in ash — FOCUS in mahogany/ash: light lettering on warm red-brown, every edge of a letter a joint.

What stays readable in wood

Lettering in intarsia follows different rules from lettering on paper. Every letter has to be cut and set in as its own piece of wood, and every edge becomes a joint. That gives a few rules of thumb that help in the editor too:

Short rather than long. On a front about 10 cm wide, one to three short lines work best. A word, a name or a short sentence stays readable from the other end of the desk.
Bold rather than fine. Sans-serif typefaces with broad, even strokes stay readable even when small. A script works too, as Ich ♥ Bayern shows, but it needs room: the finer the strokes, the bigger the text should be.
Open shapes. Letters such as a, e, B or 8 have small counters. With an open, bold typeface these inner spaces stay large enough to read as areas of their own.
Contrast rather than colour. Whether the lettering is readable depends on the difference in lightness between the woods, not on their hue. Light on dark or dark on light; two middle tones make the text blur.

What else can be personalised besides lettering, from coats of arms to company logos, is shown on the project page personalised wooden objects. Why the difference in lightness matters so much more than the hue is explained on contrast and colour temperature; how patterns and lettering carry over to small surfaces is covered in scaling veneer patterns.

Light lettering or dark lettering

The same two woods make two quite different pieces, depending on which forms the surface and which the lettering. Light lettering on a dark ground looks calm and refined, and the box steps back a little on the desk. Dark lettering on a light ground looks more open and graphic and is often even easier to read from a distance.

Visualisation of the DEIN TEXT HIER pen holder with dark inlaid text on light wood — The reverse: dark lettering on light wood. The same motif, a quite different effect.

Which woods complement each other well is described in wood combinations for intarsia and wood species for intarsia.

How your pen holder is made

Design: in the editor on CherryCut you enter your text and choose the typeface and the woods. If you want more, you can start from a template or draw a motif of your own.
Cutting and fitting: every letter and every wave is cut as its own piece of veneer and set into the surface (cutting and fitting veneer).
Pressing, sanding, finish: the finished faces are pressed onto the substrate, sanded flush and protected with hard-wax oil in a satin finish, like every Reihax pen holder.

Visualisation of the DEIN TEXT HIER pen holder at an angle: text on the front, waves of light and dark wood on the side — Front and side: your text at the front, the waves of light and dark wood on the side.

Where to buy it

DEIN TEXT HIER is designed and ordered in the editor on CherryCut; the price and delivery time are shown in the editor. As a personalised pen holder it is also listed on Etsy.

Frequently asked questions

Is the text engraved or printed?

Neither. Every letter is its own piece of wood, inlaid into the surface. The lettering lies flush with the surface, you cannot feel it as a groove, and it cannot wear off, because it goes through the whole thickness of the veneer.

How much text fits on the pen holder?

The front is about 10 cm (4 in) wide. One to three short lines with few letters work best, as in the example DEIN / TEXT / HIER (German for "your text here"). The longer the text, the smaller and finer the letters get, and fine strokes are harder to inlay cleanly in wood and harder to read from a distance. The editor on CherryCut shows the effect before you order.

Which typeface works?

For short texts on the small front, bold, simple sans-serif typefaces are the safe choice: broad, even strokes stay clear as wood inlay and readable from a distance. Script typefaces are possible too, as the saying Dahoam is Dahoam on Ich ♥ Bayern shows, but they need enough size so that the fine strokes do not get too thin.

Can I choose the woods myself?

Yes. In the editor on CherryCut you choose the typeface, the text and the woods. What decides whether the text is readable is the difference in lightness: light lettering on dark wood or dark lettering on light wood. Two woods of similar lightness make the text disappear.

How big is the pen holder?

About 10 × 10 cm at the base and 11 cm tall (roughly 4 × 4 × 4.3 in). That holds a handful of pens and fits on any desk.