After I dragged my butt off the plane to Munich with no sleep, Heiko Pulcher did me a huge favor. He plunked me into his Subaru wagon and drove me to the Das Holztechnische Museum Rosenheim (The Rosenheim Wood Technology Museum).
It’s a 1,200-square foot museum devoted to all aspects of woodworking, from chopping down the trees to the machinery involved in the processing and the finished product.
I’ve never in my life seen a museum that is so focused on the trade. There were scale models of sawmills (from Roman times to the present), machinery you could touch, scads of tools presented in context and lots of ideas about how you could make a living working with wood.
I could have spent all day at the museum (we only had a few hours there). There’s an entire display just on riving wood. Another on bending. A whole wall of handplanes and how they worked and what they were used for.
It’s not a tool museum (though they do have lots of tools). Instead, it’s a museum about work (which is way better).
If I had walked into the museum when it opened in 1983 at age 15, I think my life might have taken a turn much sooner. I grew up around furniture making. My grandfather and uncle did it for relaxation. My father did it for necessity. But no one told me you could do it for a living.
The closest thing to the furniture making profession that I knew about was architecture (our house was filled with architecture and carpentry books).
The museum in Rosenheim presents a much clearer picture. And it shows how the technology has changed through the centuries. There’s an entire display about wooden airplane propellers (they are still manufactured in Rosenheim), plus another display on wooden skis and a third display on wooden pipes used for moving salt water (true, that’s not a job you can get today).
And if I’d been there at 15, I might have walked out of the museum, enrolled at TH Rosenheim and gone full German woodworker.
If you are ever in Bavaria, the museum is well worth a visit. Right now there is an excellent temporary exhibition on Western and Japanese joinery, with a fascinating film on Japanese temple building.
And bring your kids.
— Christopher Schwarz
Chris, Thank you for sharing your visit to the magnificent Rosenheim Wood Technology Museum with us! I can see it is world changing to go there and experience the depth of their woodworking traditions. Hope you have a great visit/teaching/learning in Bavaria.
Lillian Bloom
Chris, this place sounds like a reason to visit Bavaria, as if I didn’t already have a couple in mind. I’ve never read about anything like it before.
I do have a question about the impact this might have had on you at the young age of 15. When I was that age, in 1977, I was working as hard as I could to become a professional woodworker. I just assumed I’d be making furniture in a factory, probably making a small subset of parts, in some environment similar to an assembly line. I thought furniture was made pretty much like cars. My parents worked overtime to try to get me to change my mind because of my CP. If I’d have figured out that I could do the work on my own, so no one was waiting on me but the customer, say the way you make chairs. I think life would have been different. I’m curious how we ended up seeing woodworking, especially cabinet making, ala The Joinery and Cabinet Maker, so differently.