Author: fitz
Woodworker, writer, editor, teacher, ailurophile, Shakespearean. Will write for air-dried walnut.
Geometry in Time for the Holidays
In the spirit of the holidays, let’s perform some simple, ancient geometry to create the iconic symbols of the two religions celebrating major holidays this month. You’ll need only a compass, a straightedge, a piece of paper and a couple of candles to illuminate your work. In chronological order (in more ways than one) let’s start with Judaism’s Star of David:
Begin with a circle and mark the focal point. We have actually started with the symbol for Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god for whom winter solstice was celebrated for thousands of years prior to Judaism – but that may or may not be another story.
Now draw a line vertically through the focal point (i.e. a diameter) and mark its intersection points at the rim.
Next set the compass to span from one of the rim intersection points to the focal point and swing an arc through the rim as shown. Mark the arc’s intersection points.
Repeat from the other rim intersection and mark two more rim points.
Connect all the rim points across the circle.
Erase the circle rim, diameter line and interior arcs and you are left with the Star of David.
Now let’s create the Christian cross – also from the intersection of line and circle:
Again we’ll start with a circle (which came to represent the heavens), but this time we’ll draw the diameter line at about a 45° angle.
Construct another diameter line at a right angle to the first. Use the intersecting arcs method (or just fudge it, I won’t tell).
Connect the rim intersection points to create a square (which traditionally represents the four directions, the four seasons and the earth itself).
Now bisect the lower horizontal line and extend the bisection line from the focal point down past the lower rim of the circle.
We’ll set our compass to the span between the rim intersection point and focal point, and swing a second circle. (A second of a pair of circles traditionally represented the Dyad … the reflection, the knowing of the first circle called the Monad (all one/alone).)
When we erase most of the lines we are left with a cross … a symbol of the melding of heaven with earth. Or for the math geeks: a pairing of a diameter line (2) with the non-terminating (i.e. irrational) square root of two.
Note: This geometric construction of the cross is not historical but rather the product of my imagination.
— Jim Tolpin, one of the authors of “From Truths to Tools“
Curriculum aliud*
![_MG_0516[1]](https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/mg_05161-e1513084949966.jpg)
“But what about everyone who lives along those bays and beaches?” I asked, concerned that such a laissez-faire approach to cartography might result in the flooding of countless homes, drowning the pets who lived in them. (Never mind their human inhabitants, who were of less concern to me in those days.)
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said. “It’s just a map.”
It wasn’t long before we dispensed with this farce and I sought instruction from the young people who were living in assorted small structures they had erected around our tropical half-acre backyard. I learned to make whole wheat bread, tofu and carrot pizza, and home-churned ice milk, washed my clothes in a puddle, and took cold showers to fortify my character. I dispensed with my hair brush and allowed my dirty-blond tresses to spin themselves into a head of dreadlocks that unsophisticated acquaintances of my parents dismissed as filthy matted hair.
![IMG_2728[1]](https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/img_27281-e1513082769435.jpg)
*Fancy Lass-speak for different curriculum. There’s nothing like learning to make tofu and carrot pizza and wash your clothes in a puddle to set a kid up for the discipline and structure offered by the Fancy Lads Academy.
Woodwright’s School Classes for 2018!
The 2018 class schedule is now live at The Woodwright’s School website. Roy Underhill has been diligently working on the new calendar of classes for the upcoming year and it is finally complete. Most of the regular classes are back with many new classes added as well. You can check it out here.
As most of you know, if there is a class you are interested in get signed up ASAP, they fill up quickly.
— Will Myers
Hay is for Horses
Just as the Lost Art Press Horse Garage has been nearing completion, this happened.
Whenever my sister or I said “Hey” as children, at least within earshot of our local grandma (the other grandma lived far away, in New York), we were gently nudged in a more genteel direction. “Hay is for horses,” she’d say.
But European art suggests that hay and gentility have not always been at odds.
Twice this week I heard from Suzanne Ellison (a.k.a. Lost Art Press’s saucyindexer). Unbeknownst to me, The Saucy One had turned some images of the hayrake table I made for my book on English Arts & Crafts furniture (forthcoming in June 2018 from Popular Woodworking) into a framework for a collage of women using traditional hay rakes.
“I thought if a woman builds a Hayrake Table than she should probably have a collage combining her table and women using a hay rake (apparently, men scythed and women raked and fluffed),” wrote Suzanne.
Judging by their attire, most of these women are peasants (as were my grandma’s forebears), but a couple look far more refined. Please tell me that Rosina (center row, right) was not really going to rake and fluff hay in high heels and a ribboned bonnet. And what about that corseted lady in the middle of the top row?
I’m grateful to Suzanne for applying her erudition in the cause of fun. And I chuckled when I read how she addressed me in the last message: “Hey Nancy.”–Nancy R. Hiller, author of Making Things Work
***
Suzanne has provided the following Information about the images:
Top row (from the left): Jean-Francois Millet, a watercolor from a mid-Victorian** friendship book, Winslow Homer.
Middle left: Peter Breugel. Middle right: Rosina is dated 12 May 1794 by Laurie & Whittle, London (no other info), but much earlier than the mid-Vic watercolor in the top row.
Bottom row: Camille Pissarro, Maud Mullen by John Gast, after J.G. Brown, ‘Sweet Memories’ a postcard from around 1905, Leon-Augustin Lhermitte.
Center portion: butterfly from your table, a Shaker hay rake from Hancock Shaker Village in Massachusetts, hayrake from an original table (your photo), hayrake from your table.
The frame, as you know, is constructed from your table.
**Here is a link to the mid-Victorian watercolor in the top row, it is for sale (£28.00):