Sappanwood is a tropical redwood which was a major luxury trade good imported from Southeast Asia into East Asia in the medieval and early modern periods. The wood has anti-coagulant and anti-bacterial properties which allowed it to be used for medicinal purposes, and was also used as a dye wood, to produce a variety of red and purple hues.<ref>Cesare Polenghi, ''Samurai of Ayutthaya: Yamada Nagamasa, Japanese warrior and merchant in early seventeenth-century Siam''. Bangkok: White Lotus Press (2009), 72n13.</ref> | Sappanwood is a tropical redwood which was a major luxury trade good imported from Southeast Asia into East Asia in the medieval and early modern periods. The wood has anti-coagulant and anti-bacterial properties which allowed it to be used for medicinal purposes, and was also used as a dye wood, to produce a variety of red and purple hues.<ref>Cesare Polenghi, ''Samurai of Ayutthaya: Yamada Nagamasa, Japanese warrior and merchant in early seventeenth-century Siam''. Bangkok: White Lotus Press (2009), 72n13.</ref> |