In many pieces of staked furniture, you’ll find extra bits of wood lurking beneath the top that thicken up the joinery area, adding strength to the entire table. I call these – for lack of a better word – “nubs.” Sometimes they are rounded; sometimes rectangular.
In many Moravian and Swedish examples, these nubs are clearly battens that ride in a sliding dovetail – a very fancy and permanent joint.
But in many images from the Middle Ages, the nubs look too round to be sliding dovetails. My first thought was that the nubs were just sections of a tree branch split down the middle. But that seemed crazy to suggest without evidence.
So I was happy when I received the following image from Richard O. Byrne of a table for sale at an auction site – see the whole listing here.
The nubs are clearly sections of a branch or juvenile tree.
Also good news: A photo of the top shows that the nubs are attached with nails. You can’t get any simpler than that (I think).
The “By Hammer & Hand” letterpress posters made by Steam Whistle Letter Press are now for sale in the Lost Art Press store.
These 18” x 12” posters are printed on thick paper and were made using hand-carved blocks and vintage equipment in Newport, Ky.
We printed 500. We sold 200 at Woodworking in America and two were swiped (naughty, naughty). The $25 price includes free domestic shipping. The posters ship in a rigid mailing tube.
Once these are sold out, they are gone forever. Order one here.
Staked furniture isn’t just for Moravians and chroniclers of public health in the Middle Ages.
It’s everywhere – once you open your eyes.
One of my favorite primary sources is Lewis Miller, a carpenter in York, Pa., who chronicled life in the 19th century with watercolors and text. The reason Miller is at the top of my list is he was a woodworker. So when he drew a workbench or a piece of furniture, chances are that what he drew is what it looked like.
So check out the sketch above titled “Christian Rupp and Kunkel, at the dinner Table, 1809.” The table is almost certainly staked. No aprons. It has boards that thicken the top where the legs intersect the top. And a drawer that hangs down.
And he shows staked construction again in this image: “Martin Weiser & wife, 1810, in his Tavern.”
As my house has been filling with staked furniture these last few years, I’ve begun to ask: Why have I not been building this stuff since day one (about 1993)?
We’ve just added our Lost Art Press Bandito shirts to our online store. The shirts are $25 and are available in sizes M to 2XL. These are the shirts we printed for Woodworking in America. They were a big hit, but we came back with some in each size.
Once these lieutenant green shirts are sold out we will offer the Bandito shirt in a wide variety of sizes, color and even styles.
We’ll also be putting up the “By Hammer and Hand” posters in the store later this week – we just have to wait for the special mailing tubes to arrive in the warehouse.
David Savage delivered a fire-and-brimstone lecture to the students in his Rowden workshop on the business of the craft during tea one morning and then left the bench room with a flourish.
One of the students turned to me and asked: “Are all British craftsmen this eccentric?”
I didn’t know how to reply at first. Later that day, however, the answer came to me: Actually, all really good instructors are like that.
During my two weeks at Rowden in the deepest, darkest Devon, I got to interact with a type of woodworking student that is rare these days: the long-term pupil who wants to make a living at the craft and has invested his or her last cent to pay for the instruction.
You might expect them to be 100-percent joyful to get to work under such expert tutelage for six days a week over 12 months. But that’s not exactly what I encountered.
Instead I saw the same wariness, skepticism and frustration that I experienced while training as a newspaper journalist at Northwestern University. During my four years, I nearly despised my instructors and still call my torturers by name 25 years later. Roger Boye. David Nelson. Richard Schwarzlose. Leland “Buck” Ryan.
They seemed to delight in trashing my work, telling me I should drop out and never offering a word of praise during four hard years.
As it turns out, they were giving me an education that I couldn’t appreciate until I’d left the school and worked professionally. They knew something: The writing business chews people up, and the only way to survive is to be the best – both technically and ethically.
You can’t deliver those sorts of lessons to hobbyists during a one-week class. It’s a miracle that my students had the drive to work 50 hours straight on some mind-bending piece of woodwork. I couldn’t beat them up because I was just so grateful that they cared enough to attend.
So what about the hard lessons? Who will deliver them?
In my shop, it’s me. Nothing is good enough unless it’s better than what I’ve done before. I sharpen my eye for good work by visiting museums and furniture exhibitions. So I have to raise my own bar and jump over it.
Most days I wish David Nelson were in my shop telling me my work was like a puddle of dog urine. I could then seethe and fantasize about putting Nair in his jockstrap.
But those sorts of fantasies aren’t so healthy when you are both the torturer and the victim.
