Quick quiz. There are no right answers. What do you see?
Women baking bread?
A castration?
A feast?
A martyrdom?
Work?
A drinking party?
Doctors consulting with one another?
Or do you see a forgotten way of making furniture?
— Christopher Schwarz
29 thoughts on “What do You See?”
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Lots of stool puns in your future, Chris.
Staked furniture!
Your last hint gave it away. It’s the staked furniture.
I almost thought it was building table with a slab and a sawhorse, but I caught myself and remembered your other recent posts about the aforementioned staked furniture.
A bunch of splayed leg saw benches, supporting tables for dining, surgeries, and work.
LB
all of the above
Could we be looking at early versions of Moravian Furniture?
On another topic, does anyone know of a charitable organization (IRS Sanctioned 501 whatever) that supports teaching woodworking to young people?
I don’t know about tax implications but Marc Adams has some stuff
http://www.marcadams.com/main/opportunities-at-masw/
This reminds me of when I saw the movie Big Hero 6 with the kids. There was a piece of Japanese furniture in one of the characters rooms that I just couldn’t stop looking at. The world is a different place through the eyes of a woodworker.
I see a lot of furniture missing a fourth leg.
I see dead people…
Sorry, it was too easy.
Staked trestle tables. And lack of consistent perspective when I look at the table tops. (Though my artist-wife thinks it may have just been “the style of the time”)
I only see two of the images because our Internet connection is unbelievably slow. So I am left with the drinking party and the doctors..
The drinking party table looks like it is 3 legged. That is a rather novel idea. In should make the table steady even on a rough dirt floor.
It looks like they are throwing their party at the end of the World. The edge (of the World) is just next to the table, so clearly the guy dressed in red tells the guy with the pointed shoes that the Earth wasn’t round anyway. The guy sitting doesn’t care, he just went along for the drinking anyway.
Brgds
Jonas
Roubo hoodies?
The staked table leg blazed the way for bell bottom jeans, a once mainstream fashion popularized by Sonny, Cher, and Underhill.
Not forgotten. Just, for good reasons, scarcely used these days.
Like adobe. (For wall, not images…)
scarcely used? You must mean the tables, because the concept is in windsor chair everywhere. I use trestles and benches like that all the time, every day since 1978. quite handy.
Could be a regional thing but I don’t agree that way of furniture making has been forgotten at all. Pretty common still to find a country furniture maker here in the Mid-Atlantic making log or slab benches with either 3 or 4 staked legs. As you noted that method of leg attachment is the basis of the Windsor chair.
Besides the staked furniture, also a lot of “modular” furniture. Tables are so much more versatile when you can swap the tops out for whatever you need at the time. Our dining room could easily adapt to any need if I simply kept a few saw benches around, and placed whichever board(s) on top of them that made sense for the occasion.
I gotta go show this to the wife. I thought it would be a long time yet before I made us our own dining room table, but I think I might just have the skills to pull this off….
Seriously, were joined table tops common, or not so common in history? I’m sure they’ve always existed, but were they the norm for everyone or just the higher classes?
I see bat-wing legs on the rectangular table in the final image.
I see a new book, dvd, whatever and Chris’ class subject for the next few years. I also saw a circumcision not a castration.
The title of the image is “The Castration of the Hebrews.” Maybe it was just an aggressive briss?
Reblogged this on b19y and commented:
Old school modular furniture. Three legs for stability on uneven surfaces.
Jennie Here
Each image in the Blog contains a three stake trestle, three leg trestle or a three-post trestle. Stake here means nothing but stake, as in a substantial stick of wood. I am going to stick with three-post trestle. Remember I am a post and rung chair person. I am trying to clear my head and keep it simple.
As Chris has demonstrated, medieval images are full of three-posted- trestle.
They have two advantages. First they will stand on uneven surfaces. The floors in medieval dwellings were uneven. Also, the great hall required a board on trestles. The space served many purposes. The now empty groaning board had to be easily broken down and removed and then later replaced hence the trestles beneath. Comfort was also an issue. The Lord of the Manor and his peers sat comfortably sat on the side of the board that was supported by but one post. The help never got to sit so they served from the two-posted side. We see the three- ost trestle in outside and work settings because they seat themselves well. Examples even today are the shaving horse and the spinning wheel.
The Shakers are the only Modern users of the board and three-posted trestle I know of. Are their other others?
I have used them on a table against a living room wall. I needed portability and the four-posted trestle would have looked gross in the room. I haven’t seen the two back posts in year but they are back there. Here the three post trestle also serves an aesthetic need.
Chris could increase their use by doing a workshop on the board and three-posted trestle.
Medieval images of marketplaces sometimes use a board supported by trestles with curved posts that flare outside the removable tabletop. This provided a more stable footprint. I suspect the curved posts were rived from the tree’s butt swell. The rest of the straight trunk could be used in joint construction. It has been said that just because people are dead does not mean they were stupid. I made a stool with such curved posts. I have lost my reference to the marketplace site. All assistance appreciated.
Thanks for all the images. One of them also shows a nifty post and rung chair.
Considering these images fall directly into the style and types of furniture I focus on making, not a thing forgotten here.
Scandalous pointed shoes! !
Seriously, horses (sawhorses) used in a versatile way to answer various furniture or work needs.
Carpentry Work ? Like : http://www.arcdeco.co.uk/
I see a bunch of very unhappy people. Black death? Hot clothing? Tippy furniture? Who knows why?
🙂
I always enjoy images like these. I was talking to a friend the other night. He is a professional photographer – does a lot of furniture in High Point, NC. He told me about about the Bienenstock Furniture Library, which is about 20 minutes drive from my garage. Never heard of it, so I thought I would share.
http://www.furniturelibrary.com/
Bienenstock, MESDA, and Pittsboro – all less than an hour away. Pretty amazing resources.
I see saw horses(trestles) used to make tables. I have 4 horses(minus horsemen) set up as 2 tables in my shop as we speak. My horses have 4 legs not 3 of course…