One of the reasons I first became consumed by woodworking was the American Art & Crafts movement. Though I rarely build Arts & Crafts pieces anymore, I fell in love with the joinery and the oak about 1990 when a neighbor let me sit in his Morris chair.
I started collecting pieces, but there was only so much antique furniture you can buy on a $16,600 annual salary at a newspaper.
So I started building it.
The Arts & Crafts style was my gateway into the craft, and I’ll always be grateful for it opening the door into other furniture styles, especially Welsh chairs and the real early stuff I’m building now for “The Furniture of Necessity.” Some of these pieces remind me of looking under rocks at Wildcat Mountain Lake in Arkansas. If the creepy guys in the bathrooms didn’t get you, the copperheads might.
Like this aumbry I’m building this week. Some of it is so unfamiliar it’s just weird and difficult to see the pitfalls ahead. Like mortising into the edge of 12”-wide oak. That’s an odd feeling. And then discovering that the mortises graze the crease mouldings on the stiles. I didn’t see that coming.
Other stuff is just new territory for me. Cutting the crease moulding on the top rail felt weird – it was going to terminate abruptly on the stiles. Yet when the joints went together, the shop lights were off and it looked good – like a moulded apron between table legs.
Tomorrow I start the pierced carvings on the stiles. I’m not looking forward to doing it in dry oak, but that’s what I’ve got.
— Christopher Schwarz
Gorgeous! Will this aumbry go in a church?
Not sure what will become of it.
Ok, I had to Google aumbry to see what one looked like. Now I’m curious too. What will you do with it once its build? They look very cool but my little brain is still trying to justify building one for someone and understanding what you might use it for would help the justification.
While aumbries have a strong liturgical connection, they were used in households to store food, linens or books. The aumbry is considered by some furniture scholars to be the genetic ancestor of the armoire, bookcase and kitchen cabinet.
So I’m not starting a church.
I’m sure you’d make a great church founder.
Looks a lot like the front of that blue drysink you wrote about several years ago.
In a weird way, yes.
If you are ever passing thru Northwest NJ you need to check out the Craftman’s Farm. Gustov Stickley’s Country Estate before he moved to Upstate NY. http://stickleymuseum.org. Lots of gems in this place.