Norwegian forest workers wondering where all the stick chairs are.
All the factors should be in place.
Trees? Check.
More than 2,000 years of well-documented woodworking and other crafting traditions? Check.
A large countryside with huge distances and scattered, isolated villages? Check.
A long and proud history of self-sufficiency and homesteading? Check and check.
So how come I can’t find any vernacular stick chairs in this country?
I have no idea.
Norway can be a harsh place to live. Both the arctic climate and our expressive topography has made it necessary for previous generations to employ both survival skills and creativity. Some would also claim that the urge to live in isolation is embedded in our genes and culture. Many farms and villages are still situated in roadless areas only accessed by boat or mountain trails. The off grid, primitive and quiet life is an integral part of our heritage. It’s so popular that even one of our most popular shows on national TV is a documentary series about Norwegians living off grid. It’s been running in the prime-time slot for 20 years.
You might wonder where I’m going with this. Well, I’m just trying to make the point that I’m surprised we don’t have a stronger tradition of making stick chairs here. People led simple and primitive lives, often poor and in relative isolation. Your nearest neighbor would often be behind the next mountain. Everything would have to be made on the farm using available resources or perhaps made by a traveling craftsman. When it comes to chairs, I would suspect that primitive stick chairs were the norm. Mortising sticks or even branches into a seat is an ancient construction method that’s quick and easy and has been around since they built the pyramids.
Hoem Farm, 2018. Someone must have made a stick chair here once.
I’ve searched through books, libraries, visited farms, antique shops, collections, talked to conservators, collectors, professors and myself. All I’ve ever found are either joined chairs, ladderback chairs or log chairs.
Log chair. Not a stick chair.Ladderback chair. Also not a stick chair.Joined chair. Definitely not a stick chair.
Lost and Found
I was about to give up. Then I talked to Chris Williams, the Welsh chairmaker and Lost Art Press author. I told him about my quest and why it meant so much to me. I’ve always preferred primitive stick chairs over anything else because I feel they’re so bare and honest. I’m a sucker for simplistic beauty and decay aesthetics. Chris told me to keep searching and said he was positive that something would turn up. I’m not sure how he would know, but I took his word for it. So I kept digging and, lo and behold, one day I came across this creature:
This is a staked stool found in a Goahti, the traditional hut or tent that our indigenous Sámi use to live in. It was found and documented by Asbjørn Nesheim (1906-1989), who was a pioneer researcher of Sámi people culture and ways of life. At a first glance it might not look that special, but I knew immediately that I’d never seen anything like it. It’s a primitive, staked construction. Probably made by the same person who needed a place to sit.
The unique thing here though is the use of the natural crook or root used for the seat. Naturally bent wood is often seen in Welsh stick chairs, both old and modern. Though almost always in the arm or the back of the chairs. And I knew right away that I’ve never seen a crook used like this in a stool before. To make a long story short, finding out more about this tradition became a new obsession for me. And I found several more. All over the country, both in Sámi and Norwegian culture. I’ve never seen them before and suddenly they’re popping up everywhere. It’s like when you learn a new word and suddenly you see it everywhere.
Wildly Grown Speculations
Considering that they show up all over Norway over a time span of at least 200 years, my hopeful conclusion is that this particular construction method and style got traction and became somewhat popular. Which is not unlikely, as it’s quick, sturdy and light. Norway is also chock full of crooked mountain birches and other wonky species.
I’m also guessing that stools and benches were more popular than chairs. Hence the abundance of stools and the lack of stick chairs. Chairs were a luxury. You can be really comfortable on a bench or a stool, especially if you can lean your back towards the wall. Therefore, it might not be worth the effort putting a back on them. Stools are also light and versatile. They can easily be carried around, out on the porch, into the barn and around the house.
Norwegian mountain birch
Uncovering Old Tracks
For a long time I had a bunch of old photos of these “half moon stools”, but no further information. Then one day I finally found a 1943 publication from a museum where the aforementioned researcher Asbjørn Nesheim had published a brief article. Each time he visited the Sámi people, he often stumbled across these stools and became fascinated with them. They seemed to show up everywhere he went, but no one het met could specify their origin. Which probably means that they’ve “always been there”. This was all just a sidetrack from his much broader studies of Sámi culture, but he was so intrigued that he wrote an article about the stools. His 4-page article ends with the following (translated by me):
“This article has looked at a part of Sámi culture that is neither large, nor very significant. However, this is where we get a closer look into highly developed skills within the Sámi people. These skills are essential for their highly evolved wilderness culture: ingenuity and adaptiveness. Studying their vernacular furniture also raises the question whether there has been cultural contact and exchanges between Sámi people and non-Sámi people. Taking this into consideration, I would like to call for further information or knowledge about the origins of the “half moon stool.”
These Sámi people probably had a stool, but didn’t have it ready for the photo.
These are all very good points being made. Keep in mind though that the reason he asks whether there could have been a cultural exchange, is that there wasn’t expected to have been one. The indigenous Sámi people suffered well over 100 years of ugly and shameful oppression from Norway, officially until 1959.
From what I can make of it, Asbjørn Nesheim’s quest ended there. And thereby also mine for now. If he ever got his call for help answered and got to know more about the origin and tradition of these unique stools, I haven’t been able to find out about it. However, I’m thrilled to have found a type of stool that seems to be both unique and deeply rooted in tradition. How it ended up all across the country, I don’t know. I’m also curious to why it has disappeared in tradition. No one seems to either remember them, how they learned to make them or why they make them just like that. It’s a mystery to me that we don’t know more about these stools. They’ve been around for centuries, obviously adapted by the nonindigenous and spread throughout the country. Are they perhaps so commonplace that they just disappear from our collective memories?
A beautiful, primitive Half Moon Stool. Made in Setesdal, Norway, 1862.
Finally, I’ll leave you with a little cliffhanger:Asbjørn Nesheim also came across a few very interesting chairs when studying Sámi culture. There were only a few and he didn’t go very much into detail, but they’re interesting. I have never seen anything like them. I’ll come back to them in a later post. If you have anything to add or tell me about Half Moon Stools or similar construction techniques, feel free to contact me directly or share it here in the comments! I’d love to know more.
Fig. 4-1. Moving fillister. This moving fillister has a brass depth stop that is adjusted with the knob on top, along with an adjustable fence upon which this plane is standing. The iron is skewed across the sole and has a nicker ahead of the cutting edge for shearing wood fibers while working across the grain.
The following is excerpted from “Mouldings in Practice,” by Matthew Sheldon Bickford. The book turns a set of complicated mouldings into a series of predictable rabbets and chamfers that guide your hollow and round planes to make anything – anything – that has been made in the past or that you can envision for your future projects. The expert instruction is accessible for even the beginning hand-tool woodworker. It uses more than 200 color illustrations and dozens of photos to explain how to lay out, prepare for and cut any moulding you can draw.
Hollows and rounds have no depth stops and no fences, and they have cutting edges that are difficult to maintain. So how do we guide these planes? Is it not a trial to keep them sharp? The solution to both questions is a rabbeting plane.
Rabbets, which are grooves along the edge of a board, along with chamfers (or bevels), are the basis for all mouldings when using hollows and rounds. These rabbets serve three purposes: creating chutes in which the planes travel, creating guides that serve to gauge your progress, and removing as much material as possible with an edge that’s easy to maintain and easy to guide.
Cut Rabbets with a Rabbet Plane. All the moulding profiles discussed in this book begin with a series of rabbets and/or chamfers. These two shapes define the final moulding profile. Therefore, accuracy is crucial. Much of your time making moulding is spent laying out the profiles and transferring those layouts onto the wood via rabbets. Only an efficient method of executing these steps will lead to success. There are many methods.
Ventures through the Internet, books or magazines will introduce you to many tools for cutting rabbets, including fenced rabbet planes, moving fillisters and plow planes. A rabbet plane with a fixed fence and fixed depth stop needs only to be pressed against the side of a board, held vertically and swiped until the plane’s depth stop bottoms out and the plane stops cutting. It produces one rabbet of a fixed width and depth along the edge of a board.
A moving fillister plane might seem more versatile than a fixed rabbet plane. You can, of course, create rabbets of any width by adjusting the tool’s fence. Its depth stop can also be adjusted so that the plane cuts rabbets of various depths. Limitations still exist.
Though the plow plane is slightly different than a moving fillister, it also has an adjustable fence with (usually) an adjustable depth stop. A plow plane, in conjunction with a chisel, can be used to aggressively remove material along the edge of a board. In addition, a plow can cut grooves in the center of a board, which is necessary for some mouldings.
A moving fillister and plow plane are very useful when creating single rabbets of equal depth and width in different boards. But they have shortcomings. Most profiles start with multiple rabbets of varying dimensions. Each time one rabbet is completed and the next is started, the fence and depth stop need to be changed. In addition, many of the mouldings involve chamfering a corner of a rabbet. When using fenced planes, it will be necessary to set up a second plane to execute this brief step.
A fence and depth stop predetermine the order in which rabbets must be cut. This predefined order is not always efficient. Finally, there are circumstances in larger profiles when the surfaces upon which the fence and depth stop register are lost as subsequent rabbets are added.
Fig. 4-2. Plow plane. This plow plane also has a brass depth stop, this time on the opposite side of the iron, that is adjusted with the brass knob on top. The plane is leaning upon its fence, which is adjusted by the wedged arms protruding through the plane’s body. When using my plow to make rabbets, I use only the thinnest iron. That iron allows for the most aggressive cut.
The Simple Rabbet Plane. For mouldings, an unfenced rabbet plane is ideal for the craftsman looking to use fewer planes. The simple rabbet plane has no depth stop and no fence. Therefore, each time a new rabbet with new dimensions in a new place along the board is needed, nothing needs to be adjusted. Despite this lack of guides, it is possible to be as accurate with this plane as you are with any gauge line made by a marking gauge.
Rabbet planes with no fence or depth stop excel at making mouldings because almost all profiles require multiple rabbets of varying dimensions.
A rabbet plane that is 7/8″ wide will cut rabbets as wide as the plane’s sole and as narrow as you want or need. There are few limitations to this plane. Contrary to common belief, at times you will wish for a plane that is slightly more narrow, 5/8″, but rarely for one that is wider. Among other things, a smaller plane will let you see inside the escapement when adding a small chamfer in a tight area. This narrow plane also allows these facets to be added in tighter spaces while keeping the sharp corners of the tool away from the surrounding facets. Additionally, the individual rabbets you need to cut are rarely wider than 7/8″, even for the large, complex mouldings.
I prefer a rabbet plane of this width, 7/8″, because I like to use approximately half of the plane’s sole in normal circumstances. I am able to comfortably reach under the plane and use my fingers as a fence against the edge of a board which, as you will see, is vital. If you have large hands, a narrow rabbet of 5/8″ will likely suit you better because you will use less of your fingertips. Many people simply prefer a narrower plane for this type of work because it is easier to recognize the vertical axis when holding a thin, tall plane body.
Rabbet: Setup & Use. When setting the iron of a rabbet plane it is important that the iron’s cutting edge be parallel to the sole. Additionally, it is vital that the iron’s side projects very slightly from the side of the rabbet plane’s body where the cut occurs. If the iron’s side is instead flush to the side of the plane it will be impossible for the plane to cut down into the wood vertically. The side of the iron must not be sharpened; if the side of the iron is sharp, it will scrape the vertical portion of the rabbet, or fillet. This will increase the rabbet’s width with each subsequent pass and can potentially clog the plane.
Holding an unfenced rabbet plane with no depth stop might seem intimidating. It is not necessarily obvious how it works. Some woodworkers think it is an inaccurate tool and has the singular use of cleaning up surfaces that were created by other planes. Perhaps you have read how some woodworkers attach a batten, or auxiliary fence, to the work for the rabbet to follow. This works, but it is another unnecessary step that consumes time and effort in some situations, and is useless in others. When working with a simple rabbet plane, here are the basic steps to follow.
Step 1: Mark the size of the rabbet with a marking gauge along the board’s face, edge and two ends.
Fig. 4-3. Tilting a rabbet plane. My fore and middle finger, located in front of the cutting edge, help lead the plane down the length of the stock. Pressure is applied from the top of the plane toward your body, the sole and cutting edge. Do not apply this force away from your body against the side of the plane. This second method may result in the iron’s side scraping the far side of the gauge line and slightly widening the rabbet prior to starting.
Step 2: Pinch the plane with your thumb leading on top and your forefingers along the bottom. Hold the plane at an angle with its corner pressed into your gauge line. The plane will want to stay in that line. Use your fingers as a fence and take two passes. The plane’s corner will want to stay in the gauge line; your fingers will help it.
Fig. 4-4. Tip the plane substantially. The closer it is to 45°, the easier it will be for it to stay in the gauge line.
You have created a “V.” That “V” will give some slight room for error in the following step. The more rabbets you cut, the less you will use this second step.
Figs. 4-5 & 4-6. Holding square. The fore and middle fingers of my leading hand are guiding the plane while my trailing hand applies most of the forward force. Be certain to hold the plane square, which is gauged by the existence of a full-width shaving.
Step 3: Hold the plane vertically (see Figs. 4-5 and 4-6). Keep the plane pinched in the same manner with your leading hand. This is the more difficult step because your fingers are now the only guide. Start taking passes and keep the corner of the plane and iron that are on the escapement side of the plane inside of your “V.” If you miss, try to miss toward the edge closest to you. (I do not watch the corner of the iron during this phase. I sight down the side of the plane’s body and watch the edge of the body in front of the iron. A pencil line drawn in the “V” will help the novice.)
Be certain that the plane you’re holding is vertical. A full-width shaving should be ejected at all times. After only a few passes, the fillet of the rabbet will be developed to the extent that your fenced fingers will be less necessary. At this stage you can become less careful and more aggressive by increasing your speed. Wispy shavings that flutter in the air are fun, but not here.
Your progress then should be closely monitored in two ways. First, make certain that the plane is being held vertically by comparing the floor of the rabbet with the previously marked gauge lines on the two ends of the work. Second, measure the depth of the rabbet against the gauge line running along the board’s edge. Take abbreviated passes along areas with high spots. The goal is to make one full-width, perpendicular shaving that removes the gauge line in its entirety on your final pass.
Figs. 4-7 & 4-8. Horizontal work. Hold the rabbet plane horizontal to clean up the vertical fillet. Clean-up will be necessary if you wandered from the gauge line at any stage or if the vertical fillet is a finished surface to appear in the final profile. Be aware that, depending on the season the rabbet plane was made and the season that it currently is (or the age of the plane) the iron may protrude too heavily on this opposite side or not at all. This can affect the results if several passes are necessary.
Step 4: If at any stage the plane was held out of vertical for several passes, or if the plane strayed from the gauge line, the vertical fillet along the back of the rabbet will not be perpendicular to the rabbet’s floor. To fix this, tip the plane on its face to clean the fillet.
As discussed, there are several ways to make a rabbet. This is a simple method when dealing with square stock because it involves one plane from start to finish. Other methods involve multiple planes and/or other tools such as chisels.
A metal shoulder plane, along with many other planes that have an iron that projects to the edge, can perform this task. This is not ideal, however, because they are heavy and do not easily eject their shavings.
In this way, a wooden rabbet plane is a luxury. Its tall body helps you find vertical easily. Its light weight allows you to be aggressive. Its escapement grants you speed. Its lack of a depth stop and fence allow you to cut the next rabbet with no adjustments. A simple rabbet plane can cut rabbets of any width less than their own – a 1/16″-wide rabbet is easily executed with a 7/8″-wide rabbet plane. When a corner needs to be chamfered, and roughly a third of your corners will, you don’t need to find a new plane and set it up.
Adding a chamfer with a rabbet plane is also a straightforward process. Your fingers will again serve as a fence. Progress will be gauged by sight. Look at the surrounding facets. Not only should the chamfer be of a uniform width, but the adjoining horizontal and vertical surfaces need to be uniform. Hold the plane at the desired angle and stop at the desired depth.
Fig. 4-9. Chamfering. Again, my fore and middle fingers are guiding the plane. When possible, I allow my trailing fingers to fall upon the workpiece. This will help gauge uniformity.
Fig. 4-10. Even shavings and results. Your goal when creating a chamfer is uniformity. All care, however, should not be paid toward this goal because efficiency is also warranted. Work for consistency, but do not demand it. The length of the hollow plane to follow will overcome moderate variations. The width of the plane’s sole in relation to the chamfer will overcome slight facets. Watch the surrounding horizontal and vertical facets. If these features look uniform from afar they are perfect for this step. Do not reach for your double square.
Note: Using a plane on its corner for the first few passes will eventually cause problems. A significant amount of wear will occur on the single point that runs in the gauge line. In time this edge will become slightly rounded and will not sit in a gauge line. Many antique planes show evidence of re-establishing that corner lost to wear. Some soles have been planed back so much that they approach the tool’s escapement; sometimes the face has been planed off to re-establish the sharp corner.
Fig. 4-11. Boxed corner. The boxing on this rabbet plane will help that corner of the plane remain sharp longer. It will not, of course, help the opposite, unboxed edge. The unboxed edge is used less often, but it is still used.
The solution? “Boxing” a corner of a rabbet plane is recommended if you use a rabbet on its edge. Boxing is where you inlay a wear-resistant species, such as boxwood, into the corner of the tool. This reduces that wear and the inevitable loss of that corner.
A table saw or other power tool is also an economical method for creating rabbets. When creating a large profile I often opt for this method. Getting rabbets close on a table saw then fine-tuning them with a rabbet plane is an efficient way to work. The main problem I have when using a table saw is that, after multiple passes, it will often turn a long, straight piece of thin wood into a long, bowed piece of wood that will become difficult to hold and then work. It is also dangerous to run many profiles to completion on power tools because the final product often has a triangular cross section.
Rabbet plane use begets rabbet plane use. The more you use a rabbet plane and the more comfortable you become with one, the less you will opt for the table saw. You will gravitate toward efficiency and effectiveness, which a rabbet plane allows.
Fig. 4-12. With the table saw. An errant pass across the table saw, with the blade raised too high, can quickly change the final profile drastically. Do not bother with 1/100ths on the saw. Do not feel like every rabbet on a single piece needs to be executed in this fashion because you’re already there. The risk of an extra rabbet can easily outweigh the reward of saving the three minutes it will take to do it by hand.
This last point will bring up the argument, “If efficiency and effectiveness are the goal, why not stay with a router in the first place?” I can create most profiles three days faster than a router user, unless he pays for overnight delivery of his specialized tooling (in which case I will only beat him by 24 hours). But I digress.
Mark just retired from a career as a carpenter and general contractor, so what better way to commemorate the transition than by turning our own home into a construction site with a full-blown remodel of our bathroom?
This potential marriage breaker domestic disruption has been a long time coming. It was prompted by our recognition that as we, along with many of our family members and friends, have reached the stage of life characterized by the occasional discount on a cup of bad coffee or condescendingly raised voice from pharmacy staff, it would be advisable to replace our high-rimmed, impossible-to-make-presentable clawfoot tub that I bought from a pile outside an antique store in 2004 with something less likely to cause us to trip and fall. What finally set our wheels in motion was the Hallelujah Chorus of stepping into the newly completed bathroom of our clients Nick Detrich and Kathleen Benson, who tiled their walls in seafoam green – a shade that, while not for everyone, proved the perfect evocation of 1930s camp for me (and luckily, for Mark as well). They’d ordered too much field tile and were hoping to sell it. We were happy to oblige.
The actual color is somewhere between how it appears here and how it looks on the Heritage Tile site at the “seafoam green” link above.
From the start, we agreed on most of the details. A built-in cast-iron tub, an exhaust fan that’s quieter and more effective than the cheap-motel-circa-1972 model we currently have and a wall-hung basin with intact enamel. The tall shallow cabinet I built years ago with a salvaged door and hardware will stay, as will the shuttered window-like opening that lets light in through the laundry room.
Don’t look closely. I haven’t cleaned properly for a while. We’ll reroute the floor vent through the cabinet barely visible here at right. I kept extra flooring for patches in just this kind of situation.
Then there’s the floor. I wanted to keep the black-and-white checkerboard of 12”-square commercial-grade vinyl composition tile that I installed when I first moved in, inspired by a room that Sharon Fugate and Peggy Shepherd had finished in their eclectic home-furnishings store, Grant St [sic.], in the early 1990s.
Mark wanted ceramic tile or unglazed porcelain mosaic. “It’s the highest-quality finish,” he insisted. “It’s thicker and more durable.” Exactly what I would have told customers 20 years ago. And considering that we’re tiling the walls up to about 5’, he said, we should also do away with the baseboard so that moisture condensing on the vertical surfaces wouldn’t drip down onto the square top edge. Hmm, I thought. I have never seen water pool on the baseboard, other than just behind the clawfoot tub, where the wall sometimes gets sprayed when certain tall people (one in particular) take a shower – and that condition will be eradicated when we install a built-in tub.
The wall-mounted basin, along with the tub and light fixture seen here, came from the former Foursquare Antiques in Bloomington, Ind. The sconce still has its price, “$15,” in china pencil script, written by our artist friend Margie Van Auken, who worked at the store.
The idea of a tiled floor didn’t feel right to me for this house. It’s a funky house built and finished on a shoestring budget. The funkiness is its charm, and I know the story behind nearly every house part, from the salvaged sink that lacks a mixer faucet to the gate I made to keep our dog in the mudroom and the lamp my maternal grandma made from an antique hand-cranked coffee grinder. I have never been concerned about using the “highest quality” offerings just because they’re widely considered superior; I don’t want to live in a house where my surroundings are dictated by other people’s often-uncritical judgments. I have always worked with budgetary constraints – at $1 per square foot for a commercial-grade flooring product, my VCT tile reflects a necessarily skinflint period of my history that I have no desire to forget. I feel more at home when surrounded by things that hold meaning for me.
I said it was funky. Simple bookshelves hold paintings by our friend Chris Blackwood, a clock that belonged to Mark’s grandparents, binoculars (for visitors to the birdbath outside) and an increasingly outdated globe for locating countries. The dirigible by the window is one of Jonas’s creations, made from telephone wire (is that still a thing?) when he was little; it even has a pilot compartment on the underside, though the purple pilot has disappeared.
Ceramic and porcelain tile floors are hard. From a purely sensual perspective, I find them unwelcoming, though I have installed plenty of them in rooms where they were period-appropriate. Tiled floors are also cold. If we lived in a tropical climate I might value this characteristic, but we live in a place that has winter. Of course we could address the cold with under-floor heating, but that, too, strikes me as luxurious overkill, at least for our home. So you’re cold when you get out of the shower – dry off and put some clothes on. A little discomfort is good for us; it reminds us we’re alive. For our house, installing under-floor heating as a way to make tile more palatable also seemed a bit like the logic of building houses so tight and well insulated that you need a heat recovery ventilation unit to bring in fresh air. At some point, from a cradle to grave perspective, the efficiency arguably becomes inefficient.
Also, I like the bathroom baseboard, even if its interruption of the transition between a tiled wall and floor may not be typical in contemporary high-end bathroom construction. Does it work? Do we like it? Is it easy to keep clean? The answers to these and similar questions matter more to me than some industry stamp of approval, not least when I remind myself that such stamps appear on many cabinets made with ½” MDF carcases held together with staples and hot-melt glue.
A chair and mirror from a pair of now-shuttered antique stores in town, shop-made stair rail and house trim, a hickory floor I laid on my hands and knees. The framed photograph on the wall is by Kristen Clement, and the tile below was a gift from our stone-carver friend Amy Brier.
Vinyl composition tile is by definition synthetic – a product of the plastics industry.[i] At a prima facie level, this inclines me to view it with disapproval; it certainly raises all sorts of questions, from which chemical constituents went into its production to the possibility of toxic off-gassing over time.[ii] By comparison, the 1” hexagonal porcelain ceramic tile mosaic we’ve been considering seems more traditional, and so (in theory), safer – it was used in many a late-19th-century bathroom floor, at least in higher-end residences. (The majority of homes occupied by “working people” in that era did not have indoor plumbing.) I thought back to some recent news reports about cases of silicosis among workers in the composite stone countertop industry; even though ceramic and porcelain tile seem closer than VCT to their naturally occurring components, the dust from decanting, mixing and applying the cement and grout, as well as that produced by cutting tile, presents its own dangers to health. And when you’re talking about the industry that mass-produces ceramic and porcelain tile, you’re in the world of heavy materials that have to be mined and transported, often internationally, then processed with complex equipment at temperatures only achieved with significant carbon inputs, coloring additives, glazes and more – in other words, a highly energy- and resource-intensive product in its own right. So much for any “green” advantage, at least insofar as I can make out.
As for durability, while the 1’ x 2’ sheets of mosaic we were thinking of using are somewhat thicker than VCT, the latter is far denser than the resilient sheet flooring most people associate with vinyl; that’s how VCT came to be the flooring of choice for grocery stores around the country during the 20th century (even if acres of the stuff are now being scraped up in favor of an unapologetically bare, polished concrete floor). When properly installed, VCT will last for decades.
Our bedroom is furnished mostly with stuff we’ve made or had for years, such as the chest of drawers, once painted, that I bought from a shop in the English town of Reading circa 1982, a mirror frame and sloped-top box I made decades ago, homemade curtains and a Siamese cat that my paternal grandma gave to my parents when they got married. The mobile is by Karina Steele.
“But tile is more waterproof,” said Mark, invoking a common belief. Really, though? Water can’t get through 1/8”-thick VCT. Granted, there are joints where water could in principle penetrate to the underlayment and subfloor. Then again, there are many more potentially permeable joints in a floor made with the 1” porcelain hexagonal mosaic we were considering. Sure, if we installed a waterproof membrane beneath it, the tile floor would be waterproof in a meaningful way – as long as the membrane remained intact. But we use a bath mat when we step out, and how often does a sink in our house overflow or a toilet go bonkers and leak all over the floor? Neither has happened in the 17 years since the house’s construction, and with the two of us aging tradespeople who regularly clean out the gutters, mop up spills, and keep things reasonably well maintained, neither is very likely. Besides, should we design every feature of our homes with a view to its ability to survive a rare and potentially devastating scenario? I’m not talking about basics such as anchoring a structure to keep it on its foundation in an earthquake zone, or bracing it to resist high winds; this is a matter of interior finishes.
You can answer that for yourself, but my answer is no. In aesthetic terms, to make one room of our house State Of The Art would be an affront to the spirit of the entire place. It would also be a concession to dogma – “tile is better because harder, more permanent, more expensive” – the kind of prejudice I think it’s important to make my customers aware of on principle (because you know a friend or relative is going to ask them why they chose what they did, regardless of what they did), but that I don’t think should be the ultimate deciders.
And the VCT floor is already there, in perfectly good shape. Why rip it out and send those materials to the landfill?
For decades, the ethos in the building trade has been “tear out what’s there and upgrade” – more luxury, more comfort, more image-conscious “curation.” Maybe I have just been around for enough years that I recognize the motivations underlying so many real estate and construction industry recommendations, which too often boil down to “buy more.” My life and home have been shaped as powerfully by what I’ve rejected as what I’ve embraced. Mark is persuaded. (It helped that keeping the current floor will mean spending significantly less money.)
[i] Although the word “synthetic” is commonly used to connote poor quality, it simply means that something made by putting constituents together. Strictly speaking, few things we live with, wear, or eat are not synthetic.
[ii] I should add that there was no discernible smell to this flooring, even when it was new. It’s a different product from sheet vinyl flooring.
Crucible Lump Hammers, before the wedges have been added and the handle trimmed flush to the top.
A reminder that on Jan. 1, 2022, the price of the Crucible Lump Hammer will increase by $5 (from $88 to $93) due to an increase in steel and handle prices.
The following is excerpted from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years,” a collection of essays from The Woodworker magazine while the legendary Charles H. Hayward was editor (1936-1966). The columns are like nothing we’ve ever read in a woodworking magazine. They are filled with poetry, historical characters and observations on nature. And yet they all speak to our work at the bench, providing us a place and a reason to exist in modern society.
Standing at the threshold of a new year is at any time a solemnising experience. Even when we mark its coming with convivial celebrations, there is always, lurking somewhere in one’s mind a persistent: “Quo vadis?”—whither are you going? But it is rare indeed for a year to come to us so shrouded in mystery as 1940. There was a time—already remote—when one could comfortably forecast within a little what the new year would bring, not only in one’s own immediate circle, but in the larger affairs of the world outside. True we were always subject to the chances and changes inseparable from the fact of man’s mortality, there was always the possibility of something incalculable occurring to upset our plans, but after all there still remained the ordinary kind of changes, however unwelcome. And there was always an even chance that in any one year they would pass us by.
But now we are face to face with the extraordinary. What 1940 will bring forth is beyond the power of any of us to guess. We are launched upon a war which has opened so strangely that it is impossible to predict what lines it will follow, to what extent during the coming year each individual will be involved, or even what countries will be involved. And just as at the theatre there is always a hush, a thrill of expectancy as the curtain begins to rise, so there must, I think, be something of this feeling in all of us as we stand on the brink of the unknown.
One prophecy which it is fairly safe to make is that this war will eventually produce considerable changes in various aspects of national life, notably in building and architecture. The building of the future will conceivably be governed by the possibilities of aerial attack, and if air raids during the present war should develop to any great extent, then the changes in building and town planning might well be of a radical kind. We are already getting accustomed to the idea of each house in a vulnerable area becoming, at least theoretically, a fortress, with something in the nature of an air raid shelter, sandbag protection or a gas-proof room to safeguard the lives of its inhabitants. I say theoretically because anyone who has faced the problem of turning a modern house, with its large area of window space, its general flimsiness of construction, into anything remotely resembling a fortress is only too well aware of the difficulties. Essentially the modern house is built for peace, a pleasant, cheerful place which lets in all the sunlight and air possible, with no regard to the distinctly unpleasant possibilities of aerial warfare.
Not that the house of the future need be any less cheerful. That is a virtue in modern building and decoration which I hope we shall not easily part with. But it may be very much sounder. Building may become the tradesman’s craft again rather than a piece-work job to be slung together anyhow. There are sure to be structural changes based on war experience, and definite provision for air raid shelter. The very materials of which our houses are made will also have to pass the test of war, and it is conceivable that there will be changes in these, so that windows, for instance, may be of non-splinter glass or a glass substitute. It will be interesting to see whether erection of large blocks of flats, which has of late years met a definite modern demand, will continue. I very much doubt it. Aerial menace is quite definitely a factor which every builder and architect of the future will have to take into consideration, and will, I think, be the governing principle of housing fashion, possibly controlled by legislation. One thing at least we can reckon on, and that is that we are living in one of those dynamic periods in the world’s history productive of radical change.
How will it affect furniture? It takes an age of democratic peace and plenty to produce gimcrackery. Will furniture, like houses, revert to a more substantial form? We know, all too well, the type that could never survive anywhere within sound of a falling bomb. Having been blown together in the first instance, it would take so very, very little to blow it apart. It seems to me that we may live to see a definite revival of craftsmanship in furniture making, because strength and soundness of construction, which have been the least of our demands in the latter years of this industrial civilisation, will have acquired a new importance. Or rather, one would say, their old importance. For the scanty furnishings of a Norman house and the later and more luxuriant Tudor house had to be able to bear rough treatment and the weight of armoured men. Modern furniture may have to bear a different sort of rough treatment—and an even more intolerable strain. The saying that “an Englishman’s home is his castle” is threatening to become quite literally true. But whereas in olden times the castle dweller lived on the first floor because he was more at the mercy of his enemies at the ground level, to-day he chooses his ground floor—and strengthens his basement—as being his safest place.
Whatever changes may follow in the wake of war we may be reasonably sure of this, that beauty as well as utility will evolve. Man has an immortal spirit which is never satisfied for long with the purely material, especially in anything that concerns his home. The old Norman keep, with its nine-foot walls, had a dignity, a grandeur that still speaks to us across the ages of his unquenchable instinct for beauty. And we, with our modern house consciousness, are not likely to let this go. The English home of to-day, gradually evolved from primitive mud and wattle beginnings, may be—and probably is—standing on the threshold of still another change. But all the old craving to beautify our surroundings which was born with us will at least remain with us still.
