Learn one Chinese Character a day - 材

Let us move side way a bit from series of 门 | 門 to something related to 才. Our character today is 材, which is composed of 木 and 才. 

Recall the meaning of 才, the natural combination should be "wood that can be utilised (for furniture, house and etc)". For example 伐木取材. 

木材

It is then extended to mean any "useful materials", for example 药材 - the materials used for preparing a dose of Chinese medicine. Another example is 题材 - the materials used for composing an essay.

药材

For 材 is the calibre of wood, through a way of metaphor, 材 is particularly used to mean calibre, qualification or capability of a person as well. for example 因材施教.

To confirm our reasoning above, let us examine its evolution history (image taken from http://chinese-linguipedia.org)

Learn one Chinese Character a day - 材

As we can see that from war state period till now, 材 is pretty much the same in writing conceptually.

That is all for today, now it is time for us to enjoy a Chinese calligraphy with 材 inside:

天生我材必有用