when you have a spectacularly grained work piece and you want it to be the focus of your project but the other workpieces are similar in tone. One way to make the focus piece stand out is to ebonize the other wood in the project. There are some differences between ebonizing and staining. Here is a quick "how to" on ebonizing, and you should try the method even on some scrap just to see how easy and effective the technique is.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Ebonizing-Wood-Study/The comments on the page make interesting reading also. The responders have tried and offer experiences with these and some other techniques.