Each of my books about workbenches has been about missing links in the history of workbenches.
“Workbenches: From Design & Theory to Construction & Use” (Penguin Random House) was about the benches that preceded the dominant style of bench in the 19th and 20th centuries: the Euro-Scandinavian-German-Ulmia-style bench.
“Ingenious Mechanicks” was about the first recorded workbenches in Italy up until the 15th century when modern vises began to appear.
“The Workbench Design Book” (Popular Woodworking Books) was about another kind of missing link. My boss at Popular Woodworking said our unit needed to come up with $30,000 to $40,000 in revenue to avert a layoff or two. Could I write a follow-up book on workbenches?
So what’s “The Anarchist’s Workbench” about? On the surface, it’s about the workbench form that I have come to prefer after more than 20 years of building benches. But for me, it’s also about an important change in the way workbenches were constructed between the end of the 15th century and the end of the 16th century.
During this period, workbenches went from being built like a chair – staked furniture with splayed legs – to being built like a rectilinear timber frame with square mortise-and-tenon joints and stretchers connecting the legs. This is a time period that researcher Suzanne Ellison and I have visited before, but for “The Anarchist’s Workbench” we dug deeper to try to discover evidence of the evolution.
I think we found it.
As always, I have to thank Jesus Christ for His help with this book. Not so much for being the Son of God, but for being the son of a carpenter. Because of the connection to woodworking, tools and workbenches show up in religious paintings and drawings in every century.
When I started the book, the best evidence we had of this evolutionary change was a circa 1580 drawing by Hieronymus Wierix (1553-1619) of Antwerp. He was the son of a cabinetmaker and produced an influential folio of drawings about the early life of Jesus. These drawings are a gold mine of woodworking information from the period.
The Wierix drawings and their proliferation across Europe could be the subject of a book in and of itself. Wierix and his brother, also an artist, were colorful characters. And Wierix spent time in prison for murder.
Have a look.
This carpentry drawing is my favorite in the series. It shows a low bench but it looks like it is built with square joints. And it might have a stretcher. There’s a holdfast and all manner of tools to ogle. I also love the ladder and its square through-tenons.
In the drawing of the infant Jesus sawing, we get so one of the “batwing” squares I’m so fond of. Plus dividers, a hammer, a mallet and some helpful angels.
The third drawing of a workshop is also awash in tools. Check out the marking gauge on the bench and all the tools on the back wall. Also fun: stacking lumber in the corner until it becomes hazardous is an ancient practice that hasn’t changed.
But after more digging, Suzane and I found that Wierix was not the earliest illustrator of this important bench. But that bench wasn’t far away.
— Christopher Schwarz
You can download a pdf of “The Anarchist’s Workbench” for free here. We are currently sold out of hardbound copies of the book, but we expect to restock as early as next week.
Man, write a book or someone loses their job. No pressure or anything.
Fascinated by this. It’s a book I’d definitely be interested in reading. Thanks for the enlightenment Chris.
The text of the 1617 drawing “from Germany” appears to be Dutch (or Flemish), not German.
If memory serves me somewhere I remember seeing a Roman low bench for cira 7-800 AD or so and I think it had round splayed legs
Fun fact: the original texts don’t call Joseph a carpenter, they call him something closer to a builder. Translators in timber-rich Europe of course interpreted that as a carpenter, but it was most likely intended to reflect a job as a stone mason. Which, given the typical building style of Judea at that time and Jesus’s many references to stone work (stone that the builders rejected, I will tear down the temple and rebuild it in 3 days, etc) makes a lot more sense.
Very interesting. Lost of information in those beautiful drawings, and looks like two different forms of tool chests on each side of the bench: the slanted lid on the right (dutch?) and flat lid on the left. What seems to be a wig and wig holder is a good one.
The ‘wig thing’ is probably something about making thread from flax…
Dear Christopher,
One of the captions reads ‘A copy of Wierix’s drawing from Germany, 1617.’ I think this is from the Netherlands (I am Dutch). The text on the drawing is in Dutch:
De kindheyd onses Heeren Iesu Christi.
Gesneden door Christoffel van Sichem,
Voor
Pieter Iacobsz. Paets, 1617
Translated to English:
The childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Cut (= engraved) bij Christoffel van Sichem,
for
Pieter Iacobsz. (= Jacobson) Paets. 1617.
Pieter Jacobsz Paets was a bookseller and publisher, living and working in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Thank you. My mistake. Fixed (I hope).
Some words from the low lands (Herzele, East-Flanders, Belgium) regarding the bench in the second picture: this type of bench with the front legs vertical and the rear legs at about 25 degrees can still be found by the hunderds here in Belgium. Except for the fact that ‘ours’ today have a tray above the rear legs. I have a beyond repair battered one myself. One day, I’ll make a copy reusing the hardware… I can send pics and measurements if interested…
About every Flemish pupil in the 20th century had to build one. Nowadays, pupils are teached to handle machines fast and safe, rather than use hand tools. My teacher (I am ‘studying’ carpentry in evening classes) told me she can’t make raised panels by hand (which I’ve done for wainscoting in our 1928 farmhouse). But loading machines, she can do that like no other! But she can’t tell the difference between ripcut and crosscut saw teeth 🙄.
You find the same layout with rear legs at an angle in a lot of older benches in Sweden, mostly on simpler ones used at a worksite to produce details and fittings for buildings. On some late 19th century photos i’ve seen it looks like the benchtop was brought along but that the legs were nailed together from boards found on the building site. I have no further evidence of this however.
Also, the workbench found on the Vasa ship had this layout. A lot of dutch specialists were working in Stockholm during the 17th century, especially in shipbuilding. So there is a connection to the Wierix bench there as well.
In this link there is a reproduction of the Vasa bench, as well as a similar later bench.
https://hyvelbenk.wordpress.com/2020/04/20/tradisjonen-etter-hovelbenken-i-vasaskipet/
Those are some long molding planes on the bottom right of the first picture, or something is off on the perspective. It doesn’t look like there is a shelf, just planes resting on the two stretchers.
One of the low benches looks a lot like your “traditional saw bench”, except it has a planing stop? I made one recently but haven’t used it to its full potential(haven’t used the holdfast hole), have only ripped a few pieces using the knee method.
I also like that baby Jesus wasn’t forced to be in the pit, like a lot of child labor probably was.
Anyone know how that platform the roofer is kneeling on is supported? Cantilevered on beams jutting from the side of the building? Or is it a Miraculous Scaffold?
Come to think of it I might have seen the guy that played Al on “Home Improvement” selling a Miraculous Scaffold on some infomercial…
There’s also a Dutch (or in this case, I guess Flemish) tool chest in that Wierix drawing 🙂
Talk about evolutionary development — those roofers with wings had a decided advantage.
The guilds later outlawed the wings as labor(time) saving devices.
There is something funny about the guy’s name — in Latin it is DIERX, which is pronounced DIERIX (although we can not be sure about how that should be – Latin being a dead language), and when transcribed to Dutch (or Flemish) the X suffix implies SH or SZ, which is Son of. It is like the current system of naming in Iceland (son or daughter etc.). That naming may have come over from earlier generations, but common customs at the time don’t support that theory. Church records in Belgium are pretty well preserved (even after some really bad wars), so there may be a way to clarify this.
You can read more about him and his family here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus_Wierix
How likely is it that an illustrator in the 16th or 17th century would draw what he considered to be old fashioned to lend credibility to his illustrations of Jesus’ youth?
to Curt Lavalee:
see wiki Puttlog holes.
read putlog (one “t”)
Thanks! I wondered if it might be something like that. We don’t see these very commonly here in western Canada, not very many buildings old enough to have needed them.
This research and replication work you do and have done, Dr. Schwarz, on the historical development of tools, and especially work benches and their appliances, leaves us with a permanent, important, and valuable, legacy for all people interested in the crafts and their histories. You should be better recognized and appreciated for that. The fact that you do it for the general audience, rather than the academic history community, makes it SO much more accessible, approachable, understandable, and interesting to us. The fact that you do this as a practicing author, publisher, professional woodworker, part-time teacher, and business person, is their loss, and our great gain. I expect your work will eventually be completely absorbed by them into the academic canon, and for it you will become known as a historical primary source from the 20th-21st century historical records.
History, though, is never kind to us.
“Christophe Plantin to the Jesuit priest Ferdinand Ximenes…complained that whoever wanted to employ the Wierix brothers had to look for them in the taverns, pay their debts and fines and recover their tools, since they would have pawned them. Plantin also wrote that after having worked for a few days the brothers would return to the tavern.”
They were two wild and crazy guys. And one was a murderer.
His lawyer probably argued it was self-defense, or possibly involuntary manslaughter, at the worst. Probation, if not outright dismissal, was surely called for.
The stuff Suzanne digs up is amazing.