Figure 4.1. Local color. Keep your eyes open when in museums. Thanks to Suzanne Ellison’s sharp eye, this painting provided an important clue about the use of notches in workbenches. And the painting happened to be right up the road from me in Indianapolis.
The following is from “Ingenious Mechanicks,” by Christopher Schwarz – this excerpt from Chapter IV, by Suzanne Ellison.
Tracing the history of workbenches takes one into the realm of Greek myth, along ancient trade routes, through the harshness of secular and religious empire-building and the glories of golden ages in arts, science and literature. There are many frustrations in the great gaps in the records, and regret over the loss of civilizations, languages and traditions. But the one thing that never disappoints, and alleviates the frustration and regret, is the wonder of human ingenuity.
The research for this topic began in 2014 when Christopher Schwarz asked me to translate an 18th-century description of the fresco from Herculaneum. I picked up the Herculaneum trail again in 2016 to search for contemporary accounts of the excavations and also 19th-century accounts of the condition of the fresco. Here and there, in other research, a low Roman workbench would turn up, but the majority of the images Chris uses in this book, and the workbenches discussed in this chapter, were found in June through September of 2017.
I primarily used publicly available image and text databases maintained by museums, universities, photographic archives, auction houses, academic journals and papers, and used search terms in seven languages. Occasionally, I contacted an archivist or academic researcher, and (with few exceptions) they were more than willing to offer assistance. A conservative estimate of the number of images viewed last summer is 8,000 to 10,000, with images from the Spanish Colonial era contributing about a third of the total.
Verifying the geographic origins of the artwork was the starting point to connecting commonalities in history and development of workbenches with distinctive features.
In the last couple years more public and private museums and universities have collaborated to put collections and other resources online. As we get more access there will be many more discoveries to be made, and I expect the gaps in our timeline will be filled. You may find, as Chris did, a missing piece in the puzzle is in a museum near you.
The Earliest Discoveries: 1st-15th Centuries As Chris and I unearthed examples of the low Roman-style workbenches, there was an emphasis on dating the benches and thinking in terms of a timeline, especially a timeline of innovations. Thanks to my father’s brilliant idea of handing me a map to track our family trips, and to keep me quiet on those trips, I started thinking in terms of maps. I had a workbench-discovery map developing in my head. Date, and place, would become important in solving some of the questions about the technology and the quirky features we found.
Low and higher workbenches and shaving horses are seen in flat outline in Roman funerary iconography, but for our purposes we start with four benches depicted in more dimension and detail. The first four low benches date up to the Roman Empire in the second century. Three are from the heart of the Empire: an engraving of a fresco from Herculaneum; a fresco depicting the myth of Daedalus and Queen Pasiphae from Pompeii; and a piece of decorated Roman glass found in catacombs. The fourth find, and the only extant benches, are the two from Saalburg, the frontier fort on the Limes Germanicus in the Roman province of Raetia. The Saalburg benches had the added interest of puzzling notches, a mystery that was solved, we think, by a Spanish painting executed more than 1,500 years later.
After a gap of six centuries in our record I found an 8th-century fresco of a carpenter working while sitting astride a low bench. The fresco was in an Umayyad bath house in the desert at Qusayr Amra (present-day Jordan), in a region once part of the Roman Empire. The bath house follows a Roman plan and the fresco is one of several “portraits” of the craftsmen who built the structure. After another six-century gap, five benches show up in 14th-century Spain and Italy. The Spanish bench is from Teruel Cathedral in the Aragon province of Zaragoza. Two decades before Qusayr Amra was built, the Umayyad led the Muslim invasion of Spain. In Teruel, Mudejar craftsmen (Muslims who remained in Spain after the Reconquista) built the cathedral and are depicted in portraits similar to those in Qusayr Amra. The Mudejar woodworkers were using low Roman workbenches. Of the Italian benches, one is from a Sephardic manuscript and three are scenes from the construction of Noah’s ark.
Clever Nürnbergers. The city of Nürnberg proved to be a rich source of early woodworking imagry, including this 15th-century portrait of Karl Schreyner and his ingenious pegs. Stadtbibliothek Nürnberg, Amb.317.2°, f.21r.
In the 15th century, low benches are depicted in Flemish and French paintings of the Holy Family, and in two books from southwest Germany and central Italy. Karl Schreyner, a woodworker in Nürnberg from about 1425, is one of the woodworkers in “The Mendel and Landauer Hausbücher.” In 1485, a woodworker and his bench are on the cover of a novella published in Florence. Both are notable because they are not religious images.
Each time there is a large gap in the image record, huge societal shifts were at work. In the 2nd and 3rd centuries, the Roman Empire was weakened by plague outbreaks that caused troop shortages and disrupted food production. During the 3rd century, there was a 50-year-long crisis that saw the Empire split into three warring parts. The devastation of wars and plague led to population shifts and, despite a reunification late in the century, there were cities in the western part of Europe that never recovered. In the 3rd and 4th centuries, the Empire struggled to keep control over its vast territories. And by the conclusion of the 5th century, the Roman Empire in Western Europe and the age of Classical Antiquity was at an end.
With the advent of the Early Middle Ages, Western Europe splintered into small kingdoms and city states. In the East, the surviving portion of the Roman Empire attempted to retake Italy and other areas lost to invading tribes. It was, to say the least, a time of great social and economic upheaval, and not every invading or land-grabbing group put record-keeping at the forefront. Artwork from the time does include scenes of woodworking, usually of a Biblical theme, rendered in manuscripts, frescoes, tapestries and mosaics. Representations of the construction of Noah’s ark have yielded a few low workbenches. To Chris’s delight, a series of benches in an early 14th-century Northern Italian manuscript have full face vises.
Two things to consider concerning the lack of image records from the last centuries of the Roman Empire and through the Middle Ages are: Who commissioned the art and who controlled what could be made? In other words: Who had the money and who had the power? The answer: wealthy landowners and the Catholic Church. For the wealthy, a nice selection of art might include portraits to exhibit the richness of your garments and jewels, illuminations for your Book of Hours and tapestries illustrating scenes from the Bible (and to keep out the cold). The Church commissioned frescoes to teach illiterate parishioners lessons from the Bible and the life of Christ. The civic authorities of a city state might commission artwork illustrating themes of good government and portraits of city luminaries. Artwork featuring woodworkers and other craftsmen, all of the low end of the social and economic scales, was not desirable.
How the artwork was made also figures into what survived. Manuscripts and paintings were easy to move to safety, or be looted then saved. Frescoes can be incredibly durable, but given the great age of any work created in this time period they are, nevertheless, fragile. Add in questionable conservation methods and the countless wars and conflicts extending well into the 20th century, and it is remarkable we have anything left to ponder and appreciate.
Not lazy. Sometimes working while sitting is the right approach. I have long sat while doing close-up work and some dovetailing. Early woodworkers likely sat while planing, sawing and other tasks as well. Photo by Narayan Nayar.
Many operations on low workbenches seem difficult or a lower-back nightmare until you overcome two obstacles. The first is that many operations are much easier when you are sitting down. Not just sitting on the bench but sitting on a sawbench or stool that is next to the low workbench. Dovetailing while sitting isn’t difficult as long as you allow your sawing arm to swing freely – just like when you are standing while dovetailing.
Likewise, traversing a board with the side stops (detailed below) is fairly easy. The worker remains stationary in front of the side stops and the board is moved from right to left. So, before you dismiss an operation as impossible with a low workbench, sit on it for a while before you pass final judgment.
The other obstacle to consider is your smooth, modern floor. Many low benches will move quite a bit because they lack the mass of many taller workbenches. Many early shops had dirt floors, or the work was performed outside (the book “Woodworking in Estonia” made this clear to me).
So, take your bench into the yard or find a way to immobilize the legs, especially for traversing. A quick solution is to purchase some adhesive anti-skid pads at the hardware store. Those help for all but the heaviest work.
Although a back may not call for the high finish that is necessary for, say, a cabinet door, it needs to be strongly made and of a type to suit the particular job. “Craftsman” discusses here some of the points to be considered when deciding just what kind of back a job is to have. —Ed.
I AM afraid that many of us are inclined to let the backs of our cabinets take pot luck, as the saying goes. We make a job, say, in oak, possibly putting in oak drawer sides, and backs, but hesitate before going to the expense of oak for the back. The reason (or excuse, however you happen to look at it) is that it is seldom seen, has little or no wear to withstand, and that, since the cheap back answers the purpose just as well, it is clearly a waste to spend money on an expensive one.
Well, it is logical enough up to a point, and, providing that it is merely the material that is cheapened and not the method that is worsened, no great harm is done. In fact, there are many pieces of quite light woodwork in which a heavily built back seems almost out of place. Still, it is nice to have a piece of work in which nothing has been skimped, and the argument that a cheap back answers the purpose as well as a better one may not necessarily hold good, as we shall see later. The safe plan is to consider each piece on its merits, and give it the best back that it is worth.
BACKS OF OLD FURNITURE If one goes back into the past one comes across some curious anomalies. Many of the antiques of the Queen Anne and mahogany periods of which we think so highly had wretched backs. I myself spent a good many years in a repair shop, and I can speak feelingly of the hours I devoted to gluing strips of canvas across gaping splits in panels and across open knot holes. I have seen a mahogany chest of drawers of the Chippendale period with magnificent show work—serpentine shaped drawers, fine carving, and so on—with a back consisting of pieces of 1/4 in. pine nailed across. An extraordinary inconsistency. Apart from its having no strength, the whole thing was bound to shrink and split.
Yet when we come to that much abused period of Victoria, we find exactly the reverse. Probably no finer cabinet backs have ever been fitted into furniture. Open the door of one of those huge Victorian wardrobes (there are plenty of them knocking about in seaside boarding houses). You will find the mirror back more strongly made than many a modern wardrobe door, and the carcase back a finely panelled framework often with moulded stiles or flush panels.
Perhaps one reason why there has been a tendency to fit lighter backs since Victorian times (apart from the all-round cheapening of materials and construction) is the introduction of plywood. It seems such an obvious use for ply, a material which is free from shrinkage and obtainable in such large sizes. Undoubtedly it is perfectly suitable for the purpose, providing the carcase is strong in itself, and does not rely upon the back to make it rigid.
TYPES OF BACKS There are various considerations that affect the choice of a cabinet back. There is, for instance, the question of size. A single sheet of 3/16 in. plywood might make an excellent back for a little cupboard, say, 15 ins. high, but would obviously be absurd for a wardrobe. Apart from this, however, the first consideration should be: does the job rely upon the back for strength, or will the back serve merely to enclose a space? Fig. 1 shows the idea. At A the back is needed to prevent racketing and to stiffen the carcase generally. At B, however, the carcase is already strong, and only a light back is needed.
In the latter connection, of course, it is sometimes an advantage to build in the back with the carcase. Items such as sideboards are often made in this way. As a general rule, however, it is better to make the back separately, because it simplifies the subsequent fitting-up.
THE PANELLED BACK For a thoroughly strong back the panelled type is undoubtedly the most satisfactory. It is perfectly rigid and is free from all shrinkage complications. It should always be used for pieces such as cupboards with large, heavy doors, which are particularly liable to distortion unless provided with a stiff back. Fig 2 shows the usual form. The whole thing is put together with mortise and tenon joints, and the panels are grooved in. One point to note is that if there is a shelf in the cupboard, the middle cross rail should be arranged opposite to it if possible. It may not always be practicable, of course, but the advantage is that it gives a level surface against which the back of the shelf can face (see B, Fig 3). If this is not done there will be gaps opposite the panels as shown at A.
The same difficulty sometimes occurs in a bookcase or similar item, but owing
to the large number of shelves it is not practicable to arrange for many horizontal rails. The better plan is that in Fig 4, in which the panels are flush with the framework at the inside. It necessitates fairly thick panels, of course, but it gives a far neater result than cutting out the back edge of the shelf to fit.
MUNTIN BACKS A somewhat distant relative of the panelled back is the muntin type. It is nowhere near as strong, and is rather a doubtful member of the family. Like some relations, you can’t deny them (and they are useful sometimes), but you are a little shy about mentioning them in the best circles. It consists of a series of uprights, say 3/4 in. or 7/8 in. thick grooved at the edges to take thinner panels, as shown in Fig. 5. The ends of the muntins are cut away as shown inset, so that the panels can be fixed directly to the back of the carcase.
Now, as the panels are generally about 9—10 ins. wide, and of deal, it is inevitable that a certain amount of shrinkage will take place. Consequently it is a mistake to drive in nails right across the width because the wood would split in the event of shrinkage. The better plan is that in Fig. 6 in which nails are driven in near the centre only. The edges extending into the muntin grooves are free so that they can draw out. Note that the heart side is outwards so that the free ends are pressed tightly against the carcase by the natural twisting tendency of the wood.
If, owing to the presence of a number of shelves, it is desirable for the back to be entirely flush on the inside, the muntins can be rebated instead of grooved as shown in Fig. 7. The beads along the rebates are not entirely decorative, but they serve to render the gaps less noticeable in the event of the panels shrinking. All these details about shrinkage apply only when solid wood is used, of course. In the case of plywood it does not matter.
Speaking of plywood brings us to another variation of the muntin back. In its simplest form the plywood back is nothing more than a sheet of plywood nailed or screwed in a rebate. For quite light jobs this is satisfactory enough, but to give a neat finish the back in Fig. 8 is better. A series of grooved and rounded horizontals is screwed on. They can be arranged level with the shelves as shown. The plywood panels fit between them in the grooves. For a flush effect the rails can be rebated instead of being grooved (see D).
Fig. 9. Dresser back with tongued boards fixed directly to carcase.
DRESSER BACKS These are really in a class by themselves, for although they could be applied to pieces such as wardrobes, they are not so strong as a panelled back. One of two methods can be followed. That shown in Fig. 9 has the advantage of simplicity. The back is really a series of matched boards, tongued one into the other, with either a bead or a V worked at the joints. The boards are screwed or nailed directly to the top and shelves, and at the bottom to a rail specially fitted for the purpose. In the second method, Fig. 10, wide grooved rails are screwed at top and bottom and the matching fitted in the grooves. The wide rails give rigidity, the matching merely filling the space, so to speak. It can be either very thin as at A, or it can be stouter, the ends being tongued as at B.
Fig. 10. Dresser back with tongued board fitting in grooved rails.
Incidentally, a detail applying to all backs of any thickness is that the rebates in the ends should slope as shown at A, Fig. 11. If this is not done the projecting portion is liable to curl as shown at B.
Fig. 11. detail applying to all backs. At a the rebate is cut at an angle. This avoids risk of the projecting lap curling away as shown at B.
Claudia calls this faithful copy of a circa-1810 toilet mirror “just something I really loved,” which moved her to make it when she was a student. The piece has a bow front and is veneered with flame mahogany on a hardwood substrate. The tiny dovetails in the image below were typical at the time the original was made, shortly after 1805. The black lines in ebony stringing are also typical of the time; Admiral Nelson had died and the nation was in mourning.
Claudia Kinmonth is a woodworker and scholar who has focused her research and writing on the vernacular furnishings of rural Irish homes, primarily those belonging to people of little means. One ironic result is that much, though by no means all, of the work she studies is the kind that many a furniture maker would be embarrassed to have in his or her shop. Simple forms, cobbled together by people with no formal training, typically for their own use, these dressers, benches, tables and chairs often incorporate found and salvaged materials of the distinctly non-precious variety.
Hedge chairs earned their name from “hedge carpenters” who gathered timber from hedgerows to build objects such as pig troughs and gates for farms. There are no stretchers. Some parts have clearly been replaced; staking the legs through the seats made it far easier for a homeowner to fix a damaged chair than a repair would have been in the case of a formal chair with parts jointed at compound angles.
With a résumé that includes restoring antiques for dealers in London and training at such august institutions as the London College of Furniture and the Royal College of Art, in addition to employment as a researcher at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Claudia’s dedication to documenting the furnishings of impoverished people in rural Ireland makes her something of a maverick. So when Megan Fitzpatrick suggested I interview Claudia for this blog, I leapt at the chance.
Claudia began studying Irish vernacular furnishings in the 1980s, when she recognized the subject had been, in her words, totally neglected. “I knew it was interesting, because I’d spent a lot of my life coming [to Ireland] on holiday,” she says. Her father was Irish, and holidays meant visiting his parents and extended family who lived in County Cork. She turned the subject into her master’s thesis, “Irish Vernacular Furniture, 1840-1940: A Neglected Aspect of the History of Design,” on which she based her book “Irish Country Furniture 1700-1950,” which was published in 1993 by the Yale University Press. The book won several awards, among them the American Conference for Irish Studies Book Prize, the Katharine Briggs Award for Folklore and also the Royal College of Art’s Fleur Cowles Award for Excellence, which allowed her to return to Ireland for another year of field study.
“Going to the creamery.” Claudia was interested in Irish farmhouses even as a child, when her curiosity was piqued by visits to a local creamery to which local farmers took milk from their cows by horse and cart. Not surprisingly, she comments, “that was a very exciting thing for a London child to be doing during the holidays.” While horses and carts had long before given way to automobiles in many places by the 1970s, they remained common in rural Ireland.From left to right: Alexandra_Pringle, who is herself involved in publishing as a founding director of Virago Press and editor-in-chief of Bloomsbury Publishing; Claudia’s older sister, Margy Kinmonth; then Claudia, the youngest, in stripes, “hoping to be allowed to drive.”
“We as a family are passionate about horses,” writes Claudia. “Both boys learned to ride really well,” a claim substantiated by the many rosettes they’ve won in competitions. This interest in horses has proved an asset to her research, as she always had something other than furniture to talk about with Irish farmers. As for this photo, she writes, “I used to help break horses as a teenager, so here I am, informally attired on just such a young horse, in County Cork in the 1970s. It looks like I’m teaching him to read, actually.“
Young Claudia with a baby goat.
Claudia was born in London. After completing high school and taking A-Level exams in geography, botany and art, she decided to take some time off from academic study to explore other interests. Early on, she took a job with an antiques dealer whose restorer taught her a lot about furniture restoration. She enjoyed the work and went on to work for another dealer, this time an Irishman. In part, she credits her English grandmother for her growing interest in art and decorative arts; in Claudia’s words, “her attention to really lovely things that she had in her house in England rubbed off on me.”
After making her living in furniture restoration for six years, she decided she wanted to learn more about furniture and applied to the London College of Furniture, where she did a two-year furniture conservation and restoration Higher National Diploma course. Both practical and academic, the training introduced her to the history of furniture, and beyond that, the history of design. It was, she says, “a fantastic course” with “very, very good craftsmanship being taught” by a multi-talented Scotsman named Leslie Charteris, and included such techniques as marquetry, as well as carving and gilding. As a student there, she made pieces that she would never otherwise have had an opportunity to make.
Prince of Wales feathers. This piece was a college project when Claudia was learning to carve and gild. More complicated than it looks, the piece is water gilded, with many layers of gesso, then bole – blue under the white gold, red under the yellow gold. Her teacher, the late Brian O’Donnell, was a student of Charles Hayward who appears in Hayward’s book “Carving and Gilding.”
Claudia carved this three-dimensional piece in lime (2-1/2” wide, 1-1/2” deep and 3” high) as a Valentine gift for her husband, Michael.
Next, she studied for an M.A. in Design History in a joint course through the Royal College of Art and Victoria & Albert Museum. Explaining what drew her to study vernacular furniture, she says that during her time at the Royal College of Art she “saw many good scholars revisiting and revising old subjects. For example, Charles Rennie Mackintosh – you could fill a room with books about that designer! I thought to myself, ‘there must be subjects that need to be addressed that haven’t been’ – I wanted to do original research in a field that needed research. Having family in Ireland, it was not that great a leap to spend time in Ireland doing field work.”
The field work involved “driving around looking for old houses that had not been modernized, then knocking on doors and asking people if they would let me look at their furniture. I soon learned that if I did not have a camera around my neck and a notebook in my hand, people wouldn’t let me in.”
Those who did open the door “were cautiously hospitable,” she says. Once she got to know them, they progressed from hospitable to helpful. Sometimes she knocked on eight doors in a day and only ended up with one that was useful to her research. She spent several months on the road, visiting every county. As it turns out, the homes of poor people are often better-preserved examples of how people used to live than those of people with money, because buying furniture and remodeling houses requires disposable income. Factor in the slow adoption of modern conveniences such as television (and later, computers with internet access to all sorts of products and services for sale) by more conservative, low-income residents of rural areas and you have a good recipe for turning up real gems of vernacular work. As Claudia puts it, “Sometimes we found the most amazing treasure troves in the most primitive houses. We looked for houses with elderly people who might never have changed anything.”
Seeking information about the furniture from the people who lived with it was the best way to learn, even if it only started her on a sometimes-complex path to discovering more. “Vernacular furniture rarely comes with any documentation,” she explains. “But if someone can say ‘we can remember the name of the maker,’ you can look up the parish records” or consult other types of records to come close to a date.
In 1987 her work led her to Seamus Kirwan, the now-late owner of a property known as Mayglass. Kirwan lived as his parents had, with no electricity or running water.
“His kitchen had an earthen floor and an open fire.” Claudia says. “He’d never married, so he had never had a catalyst for change, so he stayed the way he’d always been since he inherited the house from his parents.” She photographed all sorts of details. “He was full of stories about the things in his house!” she exclaims. After he passed away, the place was restored, with a re-thatched roof – “sanitized, in a way,” she adds, though the restoration has only enhanced the value of her documentation of what was there before: “Those photographs, for me, are unrepeatably marvelous and [get] better with age.”
She completed her master’s thesis and graduated in 1988. She went on to work as a researcher in the Department of Furniture and Woodwork at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. By this point she was well-versed in furniture-making techniques, as well as restoration, in contrast to the majority of her colleagues in that department at the V&A, who came from academic perspectives, devoid of hands-on workshop experience. Although the museum had a conservation department, she sums up the closeness between it and her own department by noting that it took nearly 20 minutes to walk from one to the other. “They really were worlds apart.” On an academic roll, she followed with a doctorate in Irish vernacular furniture, which she pursued remotely through the Teesside University while teaching academic and practical subjects as a Senior Research Fellow at Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education (now Buckinghamshire New University). In 2018 she was inducted as a member of the Royal Irish Academy for her publications on Irish art and country furniture, together with the exhibitions; hence the letters after her name, “MRIA.”
Claudia’s studies of vernacular furniture are informed by research in Irish poetry, travel journals, paintings and engravings of interiors, probate inventories, terminology, etymology and sometimes-vague links with grand aristocratic houses, where furniture makers would have observed “high fashion” that trickled down to work produced in, and for, farmhouses. A set of mahogany dining chairs made for a grand house often inspired copies in painted pine.
Sacrificial foot. “If you built a dresser, you were expected to make it to last,” says Claudia. In a farmhouse, a dresser might well have stood on an earthen floor (I don’t even want to imagine the chill damp of such houses in winter), or a flagstone floor that would be washed regularly. In either case, the sections in contact with the floor would begin to rot over time. The answer: sledge feet, dovetailed to the cabinet. A carpenter could simply knock the foot loose and replace it with a new one. Claudia points out that this sacrificial element is a medieval feature.
At this point, what interests her most is the frugality and ingenuity of her Irish ancestors. “They were terribly poor,” she says, “and had hardly any timber – Ireland is one of the most deforested nations in Europe. Since the 18th century, it has had hardly any trees. It was hard for poor people to get hold of enough wood, so they were ‘cleverly economical.’ They recycled a lot, as well. Now we can look back and say what they were doing then we now call environmental awareness and sustainability.” To them, however, making thorough use of every resource “was intuitive, out of necessity.”
Double use. A press-bed made for a farmhouse parlor looks like the type of press you might find in a finer house, but instead of holding linens or dishes, it hides a bed, as shown in the next two images. The parlor, which here doubled as a bedroom, had to look respectable for more formal people, such as clergy members who might visit the family. Why not hide the bed? This clever Irish furniture form, Claudia notes, is the predecessor of what became known in New York as the Murphy bed.
Still folded up…
…and now ready for use.
The settle table is another dual-purpose piece typical of southeast Ireland. A settle by day for sitting or sleeping, it can be modified for use as a table by folding the back down, as in the image below.
One source of materials for Irish furniture was lumber from shipwrecks on the coast; a lot of flotsam, or wreckage, washed up on shore. A sure way to ascertain that material came from a shipwreck is by finding marine shipworm (or Teredo) bore holes – for example, in the backs of drawers. “No wood borers in Britain or Ireland make that distinctive kind of bore hole,” she points out. “People would try to disguise it, which is why you have to examine furniture really carefully for the holes.”
Inland, people repurposed everyday objects such as crates, one excellent example being butter boxes – simple crates with a distinct tapered shape that were originally made to transport butter. People made them into sewing boxes, or seats with hinged lids. She compares this to the use of flour bags in the U.S., which were often put to other uses. The same occurred in Ireland, where people of little means used flour bags in plenty of ingenious ways, sometimes to line kitchen ceilings under thatched roofs, often whitewashing them to make the kitchen bright and clean.
A Catholic household shrine made from a crate produced by a Dublin soap maker with the motto “In use unsurpassed.” The shrine is held at Ireland’s National Museum. Claudia checked the back and found it was made of soapboxes, which made the back “far more interesting than the front!”
The back of the shrine reveals the meticulous reconfiguration of a packing crate used originally to pack soap. “The influence of technique on design is something that’s usually not considered,” Claudia points out, “but with vernacular furniture, it’s as fundamental as function.”
Butter boxes transformed into seating and storage for sewing supplies.
Not so crude. Claudia is quick to point out that many pieces of vernacular work are anything but crude. By way of example, she provided an image of this bog oak box. “It was a favourite [sic; British spelling] part of the tourist trade to sell carved bog oak in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as souvenirs,” she writes. “This is a fairly crude example, turned on a lathe, then carved, but typical as [craftspeople] often made small boxes. and inscribed names of castles or places, Killarney or Blarney, which were nicely portable for travelers on horseback.”
And anything but crude is this detail of a carved fire surround in bog oak by Maggie Walker.
In addition to her scholarship in vernacular furnishings, Claudia is an art historian. “I’ve always tried to be interdisciplinary,” she says, explaining the diversity of her interests. Her second book, “Irish Rural Interiors in Art” (Yale University Press, 2006), concentrates on historic interiors, based on the work of artists who went into Irish farmhouses and painted what they saw. The common thread uniting the interiors is the artwork – paintings and illustrations done of farmhouse interiors. In conjunction with the publication of this book she organized three exhibitions of the paintings and furniture from these houses – one at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in Cork; one at the national gallery in Dublin; and one at Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art in 2012 called “Rural Ireland: The Inside Story.”
Ewan, Finbarr, Claudia and Michael at home during the 2020 lockdown.
Claudia and her husband, Michael Duerden, moved from London to their present home in County Cork – comparatively “in the middle of nowhere” – in 1999, after the birth of their first son. Michael is a jeweler who also teaches jewelry making; his workshop is right next to her study. Their sons are 24 and 21; both are at universities in Ireland, one studying architecture, the other aircraft maintenance and airworthiness engineering, along with the more esoteric-sounding subject of aviation finance.
How does this scholar of rural Irish domestic life pay the bills? She pieces together a living from a variety of work. She teaches in Irish universities as a freelance lecturer, work she loves because “the most exciting part for me is to present my research to an audience.” She also curates exhibitions for museums. Thanks to her background in antique restoration and conservation, she works as a conservation consultant, advising museums on all sorts of practical matters; her main job, currently, is at the Ulster Folk Museum in Belfast, where she is the research curator for domestic life. The Ulster Folk Museum has a collection of Irish farmhouses; she goes into each and reauthenticates it, advising others as to whether a kitchen dresser is authentically “dressed,” the chairs are right for the house (not to mention sufficiently robust for visitors to use) and so on. The Ulster Folk Museum has been going since the 1960s. “They have the most incredible stores, with thousands and thousands of objects,” she says – a wealth of objects that, when appropriate, enables her to recommend swapping out one piece for another that might better reflect the history of the particular farm.
Claudia with her latest book. (Photo: Clare Keogh.)
Claudia’s latest book, “Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings 1700-2000” (Cork University Press, 2020) sold out its initial printing of 3,000 copies in the three weeks before Christmas, 2020. It has 450 pictures, the majority photographed by the author, who provides measurements to help craftspeople. Furthermore, the book is as big as she wanted it to be, a detail that will not be lost on other authors – she didn’t want the book to be published in two volumes. Publishing such an extensive study during a pandemic has turned out to be a blessing in disguise; making the most of what you have on hand is a timely subject, which prompted one reviewer to call the volume “a handbook for woodworkers’ inspiration during lockdown.”
Claudia at work on the pine kitchen below.
This kitchen and the one that follows are other examples of Claudia’s own work. Claudia built this kitchen from recycled timber around 1983. The base cabinets are recycled pine, with (newly purchased) maple for the counters.(Photo: Graham Cooper.)
This white kitchen in painted blockboard and MDF with granite worktops is in a house in London. Claudia built it in 1990.
A few more examples of vernacular furniture follow.
Gypsy tables: “Traveling people” by the roadside would make all sorts of things, including furniture. These tables were typical in the 19th century, when people sold them door-to-door. The black one has legs made of cotton reels with a metal rod inserted to hold them together; the top is the top of a barrel, or cask. Another is made from “whole pieces of hedgerow branches” (also see the hedgerow chairs, above). “You have to be very clever the way you nail them together,” Claudia adds, though any woodworker can probably figure this out by looking at the pieces here. The green table has a packing case top. On the right, the top and shelf are made with packing case parts that are wallpapered. Altogether, Claudia considers these “a beautiful reflection of frugality.” All three are in the National Museum of Ireland, with branches in Dublin and County Mayo; the Mayo branch has their Museum of Country Life. The Dublin site is more formal, though they also display some vernacular pieces. (Photo: National Museum of Ireland.)
“Noggins,” a type of woodenware used for drinking and eating, are another example of Irish vernacular furnishings Claudia has studied. You can read her article about noggins here. Yet another traditional form Claudia has studied is the spoon carved from horn, made by specialist craftspeople known as horners. You can read an article she wrote about those here.
A Veritas jointer fence, or something like it, can be helpful at keeping a plane at 90° to a board’s face.
Q: I have a question about using a handplane to make a spring joint.
I am using a No. 8 Stanley that I reconditioned, meaning that I flattened the bottom as best I could on float glass and sandpaper and installed a new Hock blade sharpened straight. I am using it to make a joint 7′ long for a dining room tabletop. I am using my No. 8 because it is the widest plane I have and the top is 1-1/8″ making the edge 2-1/4″ wide when folded over.
My question is why does it feel like I am hitting and missing along the length of the cut? I apply all the pressure I can on the knob at the beginning and on the tote at the end of the pass. To make the gap in the middle, I take a short cut in the middle, then a slightly longer cut in the middle, then another etc. But every pass, the plane cuts in some places along the length and not in others. Some hits and misses are approximately in the same places, but not always. Also, even though I apply pressure in the beginning, I usually get a couple of inches of a gap, maybe 0.003″, along the start of the joint instead of being tight there when the boards are stacked before clamping. Clamping does not close the gap.
I have made two passable joints out of the five I need to make, and they took several tries, so I am a little frustrated. I think I have read every article in Fine Woodworking, Popular Woodworking and Woodwork on spring joints, but there they are making short joints.
The No. 95 (aka “edge-trimming plane”) makes it pretty easy to cut successfully at 90°.
A: Without watching you work and seeing the edges in person, it’s difficult to diagnose the problem…but know that a perfect 7′-long glue joint by hand would be difficult for me, too. That’s a big one.
My best guesses, however, are: • You are applying a LOT of pressure at the beginning of the cut but not as much pressure as you move farther onto the edge, then a LOT of pressure again at the end. That’s a pretty common problem, because one thinks about transferring pressure at the beginning and end when part of the plane sole is off the board, but in the middle, not as much. So concentrate on keeping constant pressure through the whole cut.
• And if you haven’t attempted it already, clamp the two board together tightly, but in opposite directions, i.e. match planing. If you can plane them together well, minor errors can cancel each other out. (I find a long match-planing job pretty difficult, though, FWIW.)
