(Publisher’s note: We try to kindly discourage readers from giving us gifts. We have all the tools we need. And there are so many other people in the world who need help. But once in a very great while something shows up that is so stunning that we feel compelled to share. — CS)
When we get an unexpected package at Lost Art Press from the other side of the world, it’s typically a book proposal – but once in a while, we are stunned by the kindness of strangers. The hand-cut marquetry bookmarks shown above, by Elena Simonova (@woodsimka on Instagram), are just such a surprise. They were commissioned by Russian reader Alexandr (no last name in his accompanying letter), and feature Bean the Shop Cat as drawn by Katherine Schwarz for a LAP sticker a few years back, the Lost Art Press dividers and stylized lettering, and a six-stick Kentucky stick chair a la Christopher Schwarz.
Even before we realized the pictures are hand-cut marquetry, we were impressed by the scrollsaw pattern work on the lower portion of the bookmarks. Then we took a close look at the tops:
That is some tiny and impressive work!
Thank you, Alexandr (and BTW, your English is impeccable despite your concern to the contrary), and thank you Elena; we will treasure and use these gorgeous and generous gifts.
Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847) was the first settled minister of the frontier town of Blue Hill, Maine. Harvard-educated and handy with an axe, Fisher spent his adult life building furniture for his community. Fortunately for us, Fisher recorded every aspect of his life as a woodworker and minister on the frontier.
In this book, Klein, the founder of Mortise & Tenon Magazine, examines what might be the most complete record of the life of an early 19th-century American craftsman. Using Fisher’s papers, his tools and the surviving furniture, Klein paints a picture of a man of remarkable mechanical genius, seemingly boundless energy and the deepest devotion. It is a portrait that is at times both familiar and completely alien to a modern reader – and one that will likely change your view of furniture making in the early days of the United States.
The value of a minister’s library was substantial and, therefore, the fact that Fisher invested time in the construction of a desk and bookcase is not surprising. One biographer calculated that Fisher owned approximately 300 books, describing it as “not an inconsiderable store for a poor minister in a small village.” That Fisher valued reading is even seen in the plans for his house in which one of only two items of furniture depicted was a bookcase in the kitchen.
Though Fisher’s desk and bookcase is not explicitly mentioned in the surviving journal entries, attribution can be confidently made based on provenance, numerous construction features and the homemade wooden lock on the door.
The desk and bookcase was an essential piece of furniture for a minister because it housed his most important books.
The desk is constructed of pine and was painted (although the current paint is modern). The desk has three drawers and downward-extending lopers that provide a slanted writing surface. At the top of the writing surface, there is a small secret compartment with a sliding-dovetail lid for valuables. The bookcase has both full-length shelves as well as small compartments for letters, etc. The panel doors lap with a beveled edge when closed, and a homemade wooden lock secures the minister’s library from tampering. Despite the fact that the lock operated with a key that is now missing, there is an identical lock on the door to his clock face that still functions, operating by turning a knob. Fisher made many wooden latches in his house, all of which are fascinating, but these locks are particularly delightful. They are easy to overlook by assuming that they are the same metal locks Fisher might have purchased from Mr. Witham’s store at the head of the bay, but they are clearly Fisher-made and completely made of wood. Their delicateness and smoothness of operation add a touch of sophistication to an otherwise unassuming piece of furniture.
Fisher’s work has been sometimes compared to that of the Shakers because of its simplicity and conscious restraint. While the overall association stands, it is significant to point out that the primary difference between Fisher and the Shakers is their view of ornamentation. While classic Shaker work has little to no moulding, Fisher relished elaborate profiles. The cornice of this desk (as well as that of his wardrobe) sat like a crown over Fisher as he studied. His artistic vision of furniture design, though similar to the Shakers’ in its modesty, was less inhibited. Even as a young child, his mother, Katherine, taught him to value artistic expression. Katherine, whose drawings look so much like her son’s, saw a world in which chastity and artistic beauty were not mutually exclusive. Fisher was not afraid of flourish.
The cornice on the desk and bookcase sets it apart from Shaker work.
His work fits much more squarely in the Federal vernacular classification than that of the Shakers. The desk carcase is interesting in that it is constructed like a six-board chest, with the sides extending to the floor with bootjack feet. The dados are a scant 3⁄4″ wide, matching his surviving dado plane. The backboards are unplaned, rough-sawn boards nailed into rabbets in the sides. The drawers (with the exception of the bottom one, which is a replacement) are of conventional dovetail construction – half-blind dovetails at the front, and through-dovetails at the back. The drawers’ bottoms are beveled and fitted into grooves in the sides and front, and are nailed to the drawer backs.
The lock is made of wood, with the exception of the metal pins. This is exactly the kind of detail work Fisher seemed to enjoy.
The overall composition of this piece illustrates the minister’s education. Even this simple desk was designed with classical proportions from his architectural training. Fisher’s fluency in this geometric layout is obvious from his college geometry notebooks in the archives. These notebooks are full of compass exercises to lay out complex patterns. Designing a desk was easy compared to the drawings he usually did. This “artisan’s design language” (as George Walker has called it) must have been intuitive in Fisher’s cosmos of order and mathematical rationality.
Rather than rely on measurements from a ruler, Fisher relied on simple whole-number proportions used in classical architecture.
The panels in the doors are interesting in their irregularity. Their flat sides face out in the Federal style and are beveled only where needed on the inside. The insides of the panels have heavy scalloping from the fore plane, even leaving behind evidence of a nick in the iron of the plane. This tendency to continue to use a nicked iron without regrinding the bevel is consistent throughout his work and concurs with the notion of pre-industrial indifference toward secondary surface condition. For the bottom two panels, he seems to have run short on material because the panels are only barely as thick as the 5⁄16″ groove and, even at that, both retain minor, rough-sawn texture. It appears he was scraping the bottom of the barrel to get those doors finished.
Willard wrote his name all over the house. His father’s bookcase door was no exception.
The insides of the doors have several inscriptions. “Willard” is written in red ink on one door, and “Josiah F” on the other. There are also compass-scribed circles on the inside of both doors whose randomness appears to have no significance beyond doodling. Even more perplexing, however, is the recording of “1 gallon of vinegar” on the inside of the door. This pattern of documenting purchases (and then crossing them off when paid) as well as notable life events is seen in several other pieces throughout the house. Jonathan seemed to have started the habit but Willard definitely took it far beyond his father. Willard’s name, agricultural notes and weather reports appear all over the house and his son, Fred, seems to have continued the tradition.
The following is excerpted from “The Intelligent Hand,” by David Binnington Savage. It’s a peek into a woodworking life that’s at a level that most of us can barely imagine. The customers are wealthy and eccentric. The designs have to leap off the page. And the craftsmanship has to be utterly, utterly flawless.
How does one get to this point? And how do you stay there?
One answer to these questions is in this book. Yes, the furniture can be technically difficult to make. But a lot of the hard labor involves some unexpected skills. Listening. Seeing. Drawing.
As you will see, it’s a personal struggle – like the production of this book. On the day David began work on his manuscript, he received a cancer diagnosis with a grim prognosis. He wasn’t sure what the book was going to be about or if he could finish it. But David attacked the work with the fervor of a younger, healthier man. He did finish it, and got to see it in print before he died in 2019. His teaching legacy continues at the school he founded, Rowden Atelier, in Devon, England.
When you were born, the first thing that you could see, a thing of enormous significance to your suckling, dependent, vulnerable mind, was a circle. Slowly it came in to focus, and you came to attend it and see the love of your mother. The circle of the eye is the one thing as we grow old that does not change. The circle is a symbol of that humanity.
Circles and squares are a base – unarguable forms that we Classicists have used in our work since 400 BCE. The essence is to stick to low-integer numbers – whole numbers, if you can. I know – one and a half and a bit – but that’s what happens when you let mathematicians in.
The essence of this is not mathematical, it is visual. Just you and your dividers. Do you think the great masons who built Notre Dame did so with stick, rope and dividers, or with a slide rule and a calculator? Artisans’ intelligent hands throughout history have used visual measure, marking out with dividers proportions that made sense to them. Eight of these that way; five of these this way.
Before I round this section up and discuss how we can use classical proportion, I must give you a few more variants on this theme. We have been playing with it for 2,500 years, so there is a bit more to tell.
I want to return to two of the greatest proponents of classical proportions in Renaissance Italy: Leon Battista Alberti and Andrea Palladio.
Fig. 30.2. These are the systems Leon Battista Alberti, and people such as me, have used all our working lives.
I will be brief as I know this can get tedious. However, this is a reference section to revisit when you have a piece of work that doesn’t fit conventions.
This is the diagonal of the square, a ratio of 1:1.414 – a powerful form first outlined to us by Alberti. Next comes a simple whole-number variation, a square plus one third: 3:4. Then comes another simple whole-number variant, a square plus one-half: 2:3. Finally, we have a square, again solid and reliable, plus two-thirds of a square: 3:5.
These are the systems Alberti and people such as me, have used all our working lives. Palladio, however, went on to develop this further.
There is a wonderful road going inland from Venice to Verona that is punctuated by a series of magnificent Villas by Palladio. The first on this road is Villa La Rotonda, built with more squares and circles than you can shake a stick at. Then comes Palazzo Chiericati.
Fig. 30.3. The first is Villa La Rotonda (top left), built with more squares and circles than you can shake a stick at. Palladio’s plan for La Rotonda is above right. Then Palazzo Chiericati is below La Rotonda. Images: Graeme Churchard (La Rotonda); Francisco Anzola (Palazzo Chiericati)
Palladio’s designs incorporated not two but three proportions encompassing a space. The first is “The Arithmetical Mean.” Take the length, add to it the width and divide the total in half to give you a height.
Next is “The Geometric Mean.” Multiply the lesser extreme (4) by the greater extreme (9) to get 36; take the square root to get 6 and use this for the height.
And the third is the “Harmonic Mean,” which gives you a relationship of 12:6 with a height of 8. I have never bothered with it in 40 years of fiddling with shapes – but you may want to Google it. Palladio was no fool.
Palladio’s work formed the basis of inspiration for later architects including Inigo Jones and Robert Adam, who later in the 17th and 18th centuries went on to develop “Neo Classicism” – the form of the English country house. Those of you in the United States – can you see in these the forms and relationships between these and your nation’s great public buildings in Washington, D.C.?
Fig. 30.4. Andreas Palladio took this all a stage further involving not two but three proportions encompassing a space. The first is “The Arithmetical Mean.” Take the length, add to it the width, and divide the total in half to give you a height. Next is “The Geometric Mean.” Multiply the lesser extreme (4) by the greater extreme (9) to get 36, then take the square root to get 6. Use this for the height.
So, this is your toolkit – a set of ways other builders have used proportion to create a harmonic whole that is in tune with the natural divisions within nature. The difficult thing is that these tricks have been used by designers and makers for 2,500 years, and your fickle, all-seeing Mark One Eyeball has seen all this stuff; it bores her into a torpid sleep.
“Oh Darling, this is all so last season.”
(What’s the Mark One Eyeball? I use the term to describe the critical visual process. The eye has seen it all, has experienced all the visual tricks that designers and artists use. She knows it all and is desperate for something new, something that amuses and challenges her. The issue is to be amusing and new without being silly, without putting square wheels on a car. Most of the designer/maker frivolities of the late 20th century will end up in the Dumpster of History. The challenge is to amuse the Muse but avoid the Dumpster.)
The answer to the Mark One Eyeball is low, wicked cunning, deception and guile. You’ll recall that I described Leonardo as a cunning magician who distracts with a wave of an elegant glove. It took me about two hours to work out those simple proportions – he was so good at sending you the wrong way. You must do the same.
Never start with a proportional system. Start with a sketch, a drawing that you can feel good about. The relationships should be something you really like.
Then draw it again, coming up to scale, enlarging the image and tightening all the relationships. This is the time to test your drawing’s relationships with 8:13 or whatever. If it nearly fits. Hurrah! Now tighten your design so it fits exactly. If nothing fits, and you have been though everything including Palladio’s Harmonic Mean, have a really hard look at your divisions. Are they really as good as you think? Feeling they are OK is great – but are they really right?
Fig. 30.5. Most of my furniture has curves, and for a damn good reason. Having curves allows me to put the edge of a curve on a Golden Section and a foot just tickling the other side.
This is where I listen to that tiny voice in the back of my head. It’s very different in tone and volume from the negative voice in my left brain. He says in a big voice, “You are Prat.” “You never could do this; why, for God’s sake, aren’t you selling insurance to feed the kids?”
This guy, I can ignore. I know his tone. It’s her tone I want to hear. “David,” she says very quietly, “might you want to think about this again, darling?” That’s the silent killer; she is always right. The more I follow her words the better I get. So, get clever at hiding this proportional stuff.
For example, I have just seen a student’s table elevation. He had wide, lovely cabriole legs on a low table. If he placed a proportional relationship on the outside of the knees, the extreme outside dimension where there are no verticals, that is being a cunning, sneaky woo.
The last thing you want to do is bang up a box with 8″ by 13″ as the outer dimensions. Your eye will not forgive you. It might look OK, but ultimately will be consigned to the “also ran” Dumpster of History. Hitting the numbers dead on and obviously doesn’t often work.
Most of my furniture has curves, and for a damn good reason. Having curves allows me to put the edge of a curve on a Golden Section and a foot just tickling the other side. Sneaky Woo. You be one too, or that miserable bitch will consign your stuff to the “dumpster.”
In the summer of 1997, Drew Langsner held a Chairmakers’ Symposium at Country Workshops with John Brown and Dave Sawyer in between classes from the two chairmaking legends. (JB had just wrapped up a Welsh stick chair class and Dave was about to teach an advanced Windsor chair class).
The gathering was captured on video by Grant Libramento, and Drew generously loaned the VHS tapes to us to see if we could do anything with them so the video could be shared with the chairmaking world. We had them digitized (at one of those “preserve your past” commercial places), but I don’t know if some of the quality was lost in translation, or if the originally tech wasn’t great, or if I chose poorly when I sent the videos off for digitizing. I just don’t know. There’s a clip below to give you an idea of the challenge.
So, we’re hoping one of you has mad video/audio enhancement skills, and might like to tackle this wee project. Maybe the video can be enhanced but the best audio solution is to create a transcript/running text crawl? Maybe it can also be condensed into a highlight reel (there are about 12-1/2 hours of footage)? This would be volunteer work (though I suspect some LAP swag might come your way) and we’d then share it for free, too.
Figure 2.1. Legit. Many forms of workbenches work well for making furniture. Find one that suits your work, your personality and your wardrobe.
The following is excerpted from “Ingenious Mechanicks,” by Christopher Schwarz. This book is a journey into the past. It takes the reader from Pompeii, which features the oldest image of a Western bench, to a Roman fort in Germany to inspect the oldest surviving workbench, and finally to Christopher’s shop in Covington, where he recreated three historical workbenches and dozens of early jigs. (We’re down to just one low bench here now; it gets used every day.) – Fitz
Woodworking has changed little during the last 2,000 years. The basic set of hand tools, the joints we use and the need to hold things at the bench is the same as when the Egyptians constructed furniture. Put succinctly: Workbenches need to immobilize the work so you can work on a board’s faces, edges and ends. Any workbench from any era can accomplish this task, whether it be a Roman bench, which resembles a log with legs, to a fantastical dovetailed German bench with a shoulder vise, tail vise and series of obedient metal dogs.
The challenge when designing your bench is to make it suit both your work and your personality. If you are a furniture maker, any of the bench designs you’ll find in magazines, woodworking stores and videos will likely suit the work. As I said before, the work itself hasn’t changed all that much since Roman times. A hollow-core door on sawhorses can be pressed into service to make fine furniture.
But I urge you to find a bench that also suits your personality. If you are an engineer (or a recovering engineer), you might prefer a bench with metallic screws that move swiftly and smoothly to hold the work. If you are an apartment woodworker with little space or money, you might desire a Roman workbench that can also serve as a sitting bench at the dining table, or as a coffee table in front of the couch.
The rest of us are likely somewhere between these extremes. We might have tendencies toward gizmos. Or we might prefer bare-bones simplicity. There is not a “best bench” out there for all of woodworking, full stop.
This book exists to expand the array of benches and workholding ideas available for those who like to keep it simple. It is not a criticism of modern benches. I’ve built and used many of these. I have an early Ulmia in use in my shop. I understand their advantages and disadvantages. I definitely think they have a place in many modern shops. But they are not the end-all. Our ancient ancestors didn’t need them to make fine things.
I won’t rejoice if you read this book and melt your tail vise (unless you invite me to what would be an awesome party). Instead, I hope only to expand the range of discussion when it comes to workbenches, and perhaps give the engineering woodworkers additional options for holding the work when they don’t have a fancy bench at hand.
But before we do that, I think it’s only fair to discuss the ideal characteristics of all workbenches, young and old, low and high, simple and Steampunk-y.
Figure 2.2. Mt. Bench. These slabs of red oak from North Carolina were cut less than a year before the photo was taken. They are ready to be used as benchtops, despite our urges to make every stick of wood dry as a popcorn fart before working it.
Wood for a Workbench You can use any wood to make a good workbench. Except for wood that is on fire. I do not think that would work. But other than wood on fire, use whatever you have on hand.
Our society of woodworkers is still in recovery from The Great Malaise of Steamed European Beech, a period during the 20th century when beech was seen as the only sane option for a would-be bench builder. (And if you couldn’t get beech, maple was the eyes-cast-downward-in-shame option.) History has shown that Woodworkers of Old used almost any species for a bench, from white pine to purpleheart. (The earliest surviving bench we know of is made from oak.) The wood doesn’t have to be dry or knot-free. To be sure, however, there were some species that were desirable because they were cheap, heavy, strong and readily available.
Figure 2.3. Slabs from the mill. No matter what species you use for your bench, using big slabs is a pleasure. And they look good, to boot.
So, if you lived in Pennsylvania, maple would meet those characteristics. In Hungary, beech was the thing. In France, oak. In England, whatever could be gotten off the boat. In South and Central America, the choices were incredibly vast.
Many woodworkers, myself included, like to use dense softwoods for benches because they are incredibly cheap, available everywhere and (if you choose the right softwood) heavy and plenty strong. So, please don’t fret over the wood species. Any species will do.
