I finished this wainscot chair and delivered it to the Martin House Farm in Swansea, Massachusetts yesterday. I should say I “completed” the chair, I applied no finish to it. They are looking into having it stained to look like the original. Speaking of which…
I don’t often get to compare my results to the originals that I study. I sometimes don’t want to see the contrast. It can leave me feeling like I missed some obvious feature, muffed another one, etc. There’s a couple of things I’d do differently next time, but not too drastic.
I added some height to mine, to bring the seat more level, or slightly canted to the rear. The original tilts forward now.
The original chair descended in the Cole family in Rehoboth and Swansea. Maybe dates from 165-1700. All oak. Some think it was made in Providence, some think it’s a Plymouth Colony joiner. Hard to say, there’s so little to go on. One very distinctive feature of this chair is the rear of the large panel. Instead of just beveling it to fit, the joiner made a tabled” or raised panel. Here’s mine before assembly:
Unusual in New England wainscots, but very common in Wiltshire, England. I have seen many wainscot chairs there done with a tabled panel in front, then the raised area carved. Here’s one from Salisbury, not a great photo but you can just make out the tabled/molded raised area, then carved.
Salisbury wainscot chair
A post about the raised panel, and the circular decoration on the carved side.
Seeing the recent post on Lost Art Press’ blog about misericords was great. https://blog.lostartpress.com/2016/04/28/a-gallery-of-misericords-the-woodworkers/ Suzanne Ellison has rounded up images of a bunch of woodworkers – nice to have them in one place. Misericords are always an eye-opener. The thing about them that gets me is the piece of oak they come from…really large pie-shaped chunks. Makes me think riven. makes me wonder why these large pieces have no checks & splits in them. Nobody ever talks about how they were made, only about the carvings and the irreverence of them. Her’e’s a photo I shot on our 2005 trip, so maybe Yorkshire, or en route.
misericord
Another thing her post did for me was to remind me that I wanted to show this carved panel to Roy Underhill. He & I were boring end-grain recently (shrink pots), and were crowing about how lucky we were to not be boring water pipes.
This carving is thought to be a shop sign for blockmakers in Amsterdam. I think it’s late 1680s/90s if I recall correctly. A friend gave me the photo years ago, and I never have posted it. Was waiting for him to publish it…but time moves on. It’s in one of the Amsterdam museums, I forget which.
I broke it down into 2 detail shots too – this one with the lathe, skew chisel & gouges, planes, drawknives, calipers – great detail.
Here’s the other half.
The dog; the kid putting shavings in the basket, boring tools, hatchets, saws – it’s all here in great detail. Enjoy it.
It’s a busy time of year for most everybody…here’s some scattered stuff I haven’t got around to posting. These shots from Plymouth Beach are now a week or more old – I wish I was there right now, the most peaceful spot nearby…the birds are almost all dunlin. We saw a few sanderlings mixed with them.
We took the kids to the Museum of Fine Arts the other day. I’ve been going to this museum since my high school days, early 1970s. The kids always want to see the stuff they’ve seen before, so we always need to factor that in for our time allowance. The ship-model exhibit is always a big hit. we try to remember to bring a sketchbook too.
Follansbee pointing to Follansbee-under-glass.
[Here’s that upper case back when I was making it – ]
In the Art of the Americas exhibit, I ran across this New York/Western New England splint basket –
There’s a large exhibit for another few weeks of Dutch paintings – the sort of thing we used to study in detail at our museum jobs – no photography allowed in that exhibit, but outside it, there’s a painting you can pose in & take a picture. Museums love this sort of drek these days.
Back at home, the principal reason for building a “tool shed” is that there’s no room to work in the house. To compound the small space problem, I brought into the room a 12′ white pine 6×6 for carving. Made a small room smaller. When the holiday’s festivities are out of the way, we’ll get on with framing it.
The feeder birds are around, usual participants. But some numbers are noticeable – counted 8 male cardinals the other morning, along with some females. Every once in a while we get lots of them. Usually just four or five…it was a dreary, rainy day – I could only get a couple in each photo. Plus they don’t sit still.
The red tail hawk sits in a cherry tree in Marshfield, pretty reliable. Lotta spoon crooks in that tree.
That’s enough. I must have stuff I’m supposed to be doing. Distracting the children most likely the priority.
Thanksgiving here in the US, a national holiday. It’s a long & complicated story, and I don’t get to wrapped up in it. I hate football, turkey and I don’t drink. So it doesn’t really effect me much. I worked for 20 years at Plimoth Plantation, where they get a lot of attention this time of year, it being where the roots of the American holiday are. I left that full-time job a year & 1/2 ago, ditching a regular paycheck, benefits, vacations & some holidays, etc. to strike out on my own. Some of the many things for which I am thankful include students in my classes, customers of my spoons & other woodwork and the readers of this blog – you all make it possible for me to eek out a living doing things I love to do. There’s no telling how long it will last, but I appreciate everyone’s support in my work.
Our friend Peter Lamb has an Instagram site, https://www.instagram.com/gerrishisland/ and today he posted about his friend Bill Coperthwaite, who died two years ago today. Peter’s post included this quote from Bill’s book A Handmade Life:
“When we have more than we need while others are in want, we certainly thieve. But in addition, we enslave ourselves. As we learn to live with fewer and simpler things, and are able to live with fewer expenses, we become less vulnerable to social upheaval. We have greater freedom – visual, mental and spatial – and far greater freedom of movement. And we spend less time maintaining and stumbling over things – physically, mentally, and visually – and worrying about loss.”
After the class at Lie-Nielsen with Jogge Sundqvist, I got an email from my friend Bryan MacIntyre. It was something I knew I wanted to tackle, but it took some time to sift through. Here’s the bulk of it:
“I’d like to start a larger dialogue about tradition…. Essentially Jogge recited his TED Talk, as requested, towards the ends of the Q&A… He talked about the four walls he’s aware of while he’s working: the materials, the tools/tool skills, tradition, and other people. (I’ve tried looking for the YouTube version now and can’t find it again… (PF – yup, it seems to be gone for now. Jogge was trying to see what’s the story)
I have been able to identify with all but one; the wall of tradition. Since we, as modern woodworking Americans, may not have knowledge to create objects such as the wooden spoon, knife, bowl, or distaff handed down from generation… How do we define our tradition? What object do we connect with if we haven’t been around it our entire lives?
So I’m asking how do you define your tradition wall? What do you look at as tradition, while you’re creating your furniture, wooden ware, houses…etc? What object of your creation do you most identify with and why?”
To which I say “well, look – a can of worms! Let’s open it.”
I’d say it’s generally true that modern American (& probably others too) woodworkers are part of what I call a “broken” tradition, in that the continuous link from one craft generation to the next died out. For various reasons, some through a general drift away from agricultural basis to a more urban setting; mechanization of woodworking – which led to a dumbing-down of processes (and a poorer product, when you think furniture), a cultural shift away from a small economy to a larger one, advertising – other reasons too.
But I am not sure that this is restricted to America. In fact, I’m of the opinion that it isn’t by any means restricted there. Starting with Sweden, because this question stemmed from the workshop we just had with Jogge Sundqvist, I look at his father’s work, and think that Wille set out to teach his knife & axe work because in his lifetime (the past 90 years) he saw those agriculturally-based hand-woodworking skills disappearing in Sweden. This trajectory is well-covered in the DVD about Wille’s career called The Spoon, the Bowl & the Knife.
Wille Sundqvist
In England,I think about Robin Wood http://www.robin-wood.co.uk/the-craft/ wanting to learn bowl-turning on a pole lathe – and he had to learn it by studying George Lailey’s tools and lathe, and then piecing together parts of the story from various sources and lots of trial & error. George was already dead.
Robin Wood turning a bowl
In America, my “green woodworking” started with ladderback chairmaking, taught by John (Jennie) Alexander, an urban hobbyist woodworker who set out to find out how “old” chairs were made…JA found few surviving chairmakers to learn from, but pieced together bits of the story here & there. So I think in some cases, the tradition was either broken, or nearly broken, and then revived. The skills part of the tradition, that is.
Alexander’s post-and-rung chair
The tradition of having & using these “folk” forms – hmm. that’s another whole angle, too. When Bryan asks “What object of your creation do you most identify with and why?” for me it’s the 17th century style joinery that’s my specialty. I started studying this oak furniture back in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and have continually worked at it. It really spoke to me for several reasons – the simplicity of the mortise & tenon work, the frame & panel – these techniques and forms are timeless really. But also, in a personal way, all the pieces I studied were made within 60 miles of where I have lived all my life.
joined and carved chest, 2010
All of this rumination gets wrapped up in other views, angles and outlooks too. It touches on why I work the way I do, hand-tools, and mostly using wood riven from the log rather than sawn. (I do use sawn wood regularly, but almost always as a supplemental, or secondary wood in furniture). The “why” there is simple. I like it. It’s how I want to spend my day. Working with machinery doesn’t have any appeal to me whatsoever. I watched a TED talk the other day, some guy using terms like “craftsmanship”, “hand-made”, “technology” and all kinds of other buzzwords that left me shaking my head. He & I were from different planets altogether. HIs idea of handmade & mine are quite far apart. Likewise, technology. I understand that languages are fluid things, and words’ meanings change, but when I hear people talk about “technology” today, I think electronics. To me, technology is using tools. Like hammers. I get that this computer I’m writing with is a tool, but calling all these related gadgets technology leaves out the axe, the knife, the plane – hmm.
This weekend Rick McKee & I will help a new group of students learn the age-old technology of riving wood, and shaving it with a drawknife.
It’s one of our offerings with the group Plymouth CRAFT, http://plymouthcraft.org/ a small cadre of folks dedicated to teaching various skills at making things in many crafts. Our woodsy bits are part of what Jarrod Stone-Dahl calls the Wood Culture Renaissance. I like Jarrod’s philosophy. http://woodspirithandcraft.com/ It reminds me of a short essay written back in 1960, by one of my inspirations in hand-tool woodworking, Daniel O’Hagan. I met Daniel in the mid-1980s and he is directly responsible for me getting rid of my “power” (i.e. electric) tools.
Back in 1960, Daniel wrote: “Slowly, imperceptibly, the handcraft revolution is coming. More and more people will find the inexpressible joy in making things from start to finish with simple tools, simple materials, and being content to live simply while doing it.”
Last weekend we finished up the chest-class at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. Five months, one weekend per month. It’s a great format for tackling a complex project, but requires a serious commitment of time & money from the students. I am very thankful for the 9 folks who signed on for this ride. Thanks, Leo, Larry, Chris, Phil, Dwight, Matt, Bill, Dylan, Russ and sometimes Michael. And of course Bob Van Dyke for being willing to take the project on in the first place. We’re talking about doing it again next year. Set aside some time…
here’s photos. It was fun to see so many chests coming together. Students worked at their own pace, I showed the steps, and then went around to see where each person did or didn’t need my help. Here’s one chest, next up for it is the panels:
Phil’s watching his closely, making sure it doesn’t make any sudden moves.
Matt was able to put in the time for the homework, so his chest moved ahead of some others. He’s pinning it together here:
His bottom boards are inserted, and next he trimmed them from behind.
There was a lot of carving for this chest, every piece in the chest front: rails, stiles, muntins, panels, drawer front.
some sub-assemblies. Lots of parts to keep track of, from back when they were coming out of the log to now.
For me, a fun sideshow was watching Bob Van Dyke driving nails into a trestle table he’s built. Out of his element for sure…
Here’s his finished table:
The reason he was uncomfortable nailing table tops – this is his usual sort of work, in this case all done with mirrors (he’s using 2 mirrors to compose the inlay decoration for the table top.) the top will not be nailed on from above.
here’s some posts from earlier in the series on this class.
I’ve been working this week on prepping the carved chest with drawers so I can teach the final session of that class this weekend at the Connecticut Valley School of Woodworking. Thanks to the group who made that class possible – it’s a huge commitment of time & resources (polite-speak for money) to come there for a weekend-per-month for 5 months. I appreciate it, guys, Now get back to work!
My teaching schedule is still going, and there’s spaces left in these classes. If you’re inclined, follow the links:
I missed going to Maine this July (pesky England got in the way!) so I am glad to be headed back that way in a couple of weeks. We have a 2-day class in carving hewn bowls. Dave Fisher is going to have to go back to school soon, so come learn my way of making these bowls. https://www.lie-nielsen.com/workshop/USA/71 I’m looking forward to trying a Nic Westermann adze. We did these bowls (& spoons) at Roy Underhill’s earlier this summer, and the bowls were a huge hit. People carved excellent bowls in that class.
Beyond that, September is my turn to be a student, I’ll be part of Jogge Sundqvist’s class at Lie-Nielsen. So I’m not teaching that month. Then other than the Marc Adams gig, my classes are closer to home for the remainder of the year. I have a few at Plymouth CRAFT –
We did an introductory riving class a while back, now we’ve expanded it to 2 days. We’ll rive open some oak logs and learn how to coerce them into garden hurdles – (think moveable fencing). It’ll be Rick McKee & I, and I bet Pret Woodburn will be around to join us as well…splitting, riving, hewing, drawknive work & more. Great food, perfect fall weather. Come to Plymouth. October 10 & 11: http://plymouthcraft.org/?tribe_events=riving-now-two-days
