Just a quick reminder that we will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday to sell books and talk woodworking at our headquarters: 837 Willard St. in Covington, Ky.
We have our full line of books here, plus lots of T-shirts, stickers and posters – including some letterpress “Anarchist’s Tool Chest Posters” that I just dug up. And we also have about 13 blemished or returned books that are half price (cash only), including a few copies of the standard edition of “Roubo on Marquetry.”
GOLD and silver; earthenware, pewter and china, have, in different times and under different circumstances been used for plates. Our own forefathers relied on wood. From the earliest times to days well within living memory the wooden platter, the bowl, the drinking vessel, the spoon and even the knife and fork lay on the rude trestle table for daily meals.
Many countrymen recall the wooden implements of childhood memory, and the writer himself remembers the flattened wood porridge plate and the coarse surfaced bowl of the wooden spoon.
Until early Tudor times the wooden platter was almost universal. Then, and for long before (indeed, too, for long afterwards) the common table was found in every home, the humblest stable boy “supping with his titled lord.” His only dish might be a square wooden platter such as (A) in the illustration, whilst for anything approaching an implement such as a knife or fork the fingers and teeth were sufficiently dexterous for the purpose. Later, as ideas of refinement crept in, superior wooden vessels were found at the head of the table, whilst cruder ones were provided for retainers at the lower end.
Dogs (many of them) did much of the cleaning up. When wooden knives, forks and spoons, rather more difficult to fashion, came into general use it was the custom of visitors to bring their own with them.
The gradual development of the plate is interesting, although its various forms cannot be traced with absolute accuracy. Naturally they vary in different countries. Quite obviously, the earliest plate was a mere platter – a roughly squared board (as A), perhaps about 8 ins. To 10 ins., with its upper surface smoothed for reasonably comfortable use. The first innovation was a shallow circular sinking in the board as at (B), the depression preventing the overflow of gravy. The addition of a smaller sinking at one corner for salt came later.
Larger flat trenchers from which the food was handed round the table took a rectangular form and might be 18 ins. by 12 ins. or more. These would have rounded corners, whilst, after dishing came to be introduced, they frequently took an oval or square-oval form. A deeper cavity at one end to take the gravy has in pewter and earthenware dishes, continued to the present day.
The dishing, or hollowing, of platters gradually brought in the circular form, of which (C) is the earliest. At first the centre of the plate was kept flat as at E, 1), but hollows such as those at (C),
(D) and (E, 2) became more frequent. The section at (F) is a later development. These circular plates might be from 6½ in. to 9 in. in diameter, but often for special purposes exceeded this size. Note that at (D) there is practically no rim. At (C) the rim is hardly more than a bead, whilst at (E) and (F) the rims are much wider. As craftsmen gained skill in turning, the bowls of these plates became deeper and better suited to their purpose; delicately moulded rims appeared, and, as the under surfaces were worked to a pleasing and useful section, the plate became lighter to handle. Sycamore was the most generally favoured wood for dishes in which cooked food was to be placed. For bread and uncooked fruit, beech plates were more common.
— From The Woodworker magazine, edited by Charles H. Hayward
Every month we get queries from people who want to write a book for us. And every month I send each of them a nice rejection letter. We simply don’t choose authors that way.
Every Lost Art Press book begins as a long conversation between the writer, John and me about things that may or may not become a book. Most of these conversations are dead ends, but they are interesting dead ends.
During the conversations, we’re also sizing up the author as a person and asking ourselves the questions: Do we want to be in business with this person? Do we like them? Do we share the same ethics about the craft and business?
If all the stars align, we start working on a book together. And if the stars align again, it gets published.
Starting Monday we’re going to introduce you to each of our authors through lengthy profiles written by Kara Gebhart Uhl and published here. The first one will be on Peter Galbert, author of “Chairmaker’s Notebook.”
This book started out as a three-way conversation between Peter, Curtis Buchanan and me in Berea, Ky. The project took several crazy turns until it finally was birthed as the massive “Chairmaker’s Notebook.”
I’ve already read Kara’s profile of Peter, and I learned a lot about Peter, even though I’ve known him for years.
I hope you enjoy these periodic profiles. After Peter, Kara will be writing about Robert Wearing and Matt Bickford.
MACHINIST: Well, I assume that you generally make small things. If ever you decide, say, to panel one of your rooms, I trust that you will remain true to your principles and do all your ripping out, grooving, moulding, and jointing by hand!
(Editor’s note: This is the final entry in this series. No surprise – it ended with a troll. — CS)
HANDWORKER: Are we not approaching the matter from different angles? You regard the operation as nothing more than a means to an end. I do not agree. If we were speaking of the trade in which the production of so many pieces of furniture is all that matters there might be something in it. For the home woodworker the case is entirely different. My belief is that, although a man may need, say, a sideboard, this need is more or less incidental to the fact of his making it. The real reason which sets a man at work is the interest in the work itself, the expression he is able to give to his ideas, and the desire to construct something useful and beautiful. In using a machine he is robbing himself of half of his pleasure. He may make the job more quickly, but he will have lost a great deal of satisfaction. It is like a man in a motor car. He will glance at fifty times as many things as the man who is walking, but it is the latter who really sees more.
