Suzanne “Saucy Indexer” Ellison was digging around in the digital archives of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and turned up some fantastic images you might enjoy exploring.
The Rijksmuseum provides high-resolution images freely to anyone who creates an account and encourages users to use the images to make T-shirts or some other art form. It’s a surprisingly refreshing approach compared to the locked doors of other museums.
The image at the top of this blog entry is titled “Carpenter points to the drill that he has in his hand, Jan Luyken, bet. Pieter Cornelis van der Arentsz & Sys (II), 1711.” It’s a delightful drawing; the carpenter looks like he’s explaining how his drill works to a television audience.
Some notable details: The workbench has angled legs with only two stretchers. It’s a bit like a modified Roman workbench. I cannot see any vises, but the benchtop is obscured by the subject and his tools. I think it’s clear the benchtop is 38” from the ground, however.
At the carpenter’s feet are more tools: the curious Dutch sabre saw, a hammer with a nice handle and a cross pane, a plane, a box of nails and some other stuff that’s unclear to me.
Flight to Egypt and Joseph as a Carpenter, Wheelwright and Cooper
The second image is a lot like the famous Stent panel in that it was created by someone who was a woodworker, so the details are likely to be more accurate than a drawing or painting.
This panel, circa 1600-1699, has lots to see. In the top left, Joseph is shown at a bench that is almost identical in structure to the first plate in this blog entry. Again, no vises are evident, nor is a planing stop (though there has to be something there). Again, a 38”-high workbench.
Behind him are tools: a bowsaw, bench planes, compass, rabbeting or moulding planes, a brace, miter template, perhaps a second template and a rack of chisels.
Love the hat.
In the carpentry scene below, Joseph has a try square, a level, mallet and a chisel.
In the wheelwright scene and cooperage scenes on the right we get to see a drawknife make an appearance in both.
In the center of the panel we have Joseph holding his basket of tools with his sabre saw over his shoulder.
From The Four Times of Day, John Saenredam, Cornelius Schonaeus, 1675 – 1607
This engraving shows a carpenter crosscutting a board with a sabre saw while he kneels on a a beam. Behind him a woodworker planes what looks like the top of a table (I think that’s a drawer below).
Oh, and that’s Apollo on the cloud.
New Year Postcard from the carpenter’s guild in Haarlem, circa 1600
This image is one I’ve been studying for some time after Jeff Burks first pointed it out to me. It pictures Joseph in his workshop at a 38”-high workbench that clearly is built in the Roman style. And it has what looks like planing stops.
At Joseph’s feet is a sabre saw and a bowsaw. Plus the baby Jesus striking a chalk line with the help of a cherub.
I’ve been studying this plate (and a bunch of others) as a way of sorting out the culture of tool storage – who uses racks, who uses chests etc. That’s a topic for another day.
Suzanne sent me links to many more images, but I have to get my butt into the shop. I’ve got blind dovetails to cut and pine to process for a demonstration next weekend in Alabama.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. All the stuff above about 38″-high workbenches is just a joke to amuse myself. Ignore it.
Ignore nothin’.
I’m convinced, my bench top is too low!
The best thing about those images is that they include a gnomon for common scaler reference. Since 38″ is the universally understood height for benches the sizes, every other item can be ascertained; from average carpenter height, to carving gouge handle thickness.
Exactly. For example, it’s clear that Joseph is at least 7 feet tall, which jibes with historical accounts that describe him as one of the most formidable starting power forwards in the JBA. 😀
Ah, but are they period inches, colonial inches, or modern metric inches?
Probably just European inches (as opposed to African, of course).
DAVE! Fancy seeing you here.
Likewise! Been lurking here for a few years, was pleasantly surprised to see your name pop up during the LAP website redesign.
The pedestal to the left of Mary and to the right of the guy with the plane in the woodcut has a curious figure on top, looks like a little person cut in half. What’s that?
It appears to be a figure of a man in armor, broken in half. I think it is part of the central scene of the Holy Family. During the Flight into Egypt, pagan idols crumbled and fell as the Holy Family passed. It is described in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, which was a common source for religious iconography up to the 18th century, but this is a fairly uncommonly depicted scene.
The “saber saw” has a handle like a Japanese pull-saw but the teeth seem to be shaped to cut on the push stroke. Doesn’t seem very ergonomic.When did D shaped handles come into vogue?
Hank,
The “sabre saw” is as old as human civilization. Egypt. Vikings. Etc. The saw that we think of as a handsaw is a fairly recent innovation – likely the 17th or early 18th c. And limited to England, the Americas and the Dutch.
I find not only similarities in the shape of the saber saws, but also in the shape of the plane totes; a handle before the iron with a wave’s sweep. The first image has what looks like two sized planes, a large jointer on the ground under that fancy shmancy handled hammer, and a trying plane on the bench.
The shape later shows up in the Guild’s New Years post card on a hanging plane on the wall. However the brace infomercial pitchman with his fashionable half apron seems to have wooden planes, whereas the Guild’s plane is angled on the sides and not very thick, suggesting a metal plane.
We see the plane with this tote shape in action being pushed by the apprentice in the back of the print with Apollo. The way he is holding the plane, does not look like a lot of weight could get behind it, but this maybe a case where the artist missed this subtlety in body mechanics, but he sure didn’t miss those shavings, He must have been just as enamored by the shavings from a plane as some people are now a days. We also see the pretty lady sitting happily by the handsome joiner, proving once again that chicks dig a woodworker. or maybe she is also enamored by the shavings.
Another similarity of the last three images is the near identical chisel and mallet.
It brings up the fact that changes in the tools was once a slower evolution than it is now. A father’s set of tools would resemble his son’s kit, and there would be a lot of nuanced use of those same tools.
With the rabid change of technology in the woodshop in the last two hundred years, we can see huge shifts in the quality and range of tools available to us from one decade to the next. Think about your old Makita stick battery drill from the eighties with 9.6V, to the 24V Bosch anchor from the nineties to todays 18V lithium-ion light weight compact drills and impact drivers.
Thanks for bring all these images out into the open for people to explore the history of this craft of ours. I truly enjoy this blog and all the work you guys put into it. 🙂
Never in a million years would I have guessed that you, Chris Schwarz, might be amusing yourself in your own blog about a woodworking topic for which people have some very strong opinions. (It would have been interesting to see the responses had you not include the disclaimer.)
The images are always enjoyable. Thanks for posting.
Culture of tool storage: there has been some talk about this on the Neanderthal page on Sawmill Creek. Most of the earlier works depict either racks on the walls or a basket. I’m concerned about the basket though, I sure wouldn’t want my edges getting all banged up in a basket, and I doubt anyone then would have been keen on that either. Unfortunately most of this is speculation.
As far as tool chests go, you have the mastermyr chest, and I’m not sure what all else, but it isn’t much.
Thanks for the blog