A circa 1800 worktable. Thanks to Richard O. Byrne for digging this up.
“It is of no use to design furniture; it cannot be designed.”
— Kaare Klint, Mobilia Magazine, No. 56, 1960
As a teacher especially, Kaare Klint exerted a strong influence. With his students, he studied how a piece of furniture was to function and took anthropometric measurements. As a design theorist, Kaare Klint looked back to the crafts tradition and skilled craftsmanship, for which meticulous attention to detail and a knowledge of materials were essential. This was the basis on which new forms were to be created from existing forms that had proved their worth, not a radical break with tradition but rather an evolution.
Our plan was to offer 1,000 postcards and order a few extra in case some of the postcards were spindled or mutilated in transit. When ordering from our supplier the next tier up was 2,000 postcards.
As a result, we have a few hundred left in our warehouse and will continue to ship them with every domestic order until they are gone.
One other note: The first press run of “Virtuoso” is nearly depleted. So if you are one of those people who desires a first edition, you better click quickly.
This week John stopped by to pick up a pile of books left over from the Handworks show and tossed me a bag packed with computer cords and a silver bullet.
“Uh dude,” I said. “You left some ammo in my bag.”
“Nope,” John said. “Someone gave me that to give to you.”
“Oh great,” I replied. “Another death threat.” (Note: This is an exaggeration. I haven’t gotten a good solid death threat in 20 years. However, people do regularly threaten to beat me up.)
I examined the curious ribbed capsule and turned it over. Yup – the base looked like a shotgun shell. OK, time to open it up and read the threatening note inside that is no doubt written in all capital letters.
I twisted the top. It came off and I laughed. Inside is a nozzle. It’s an oilcan.
It turns out to be a Perfect Pocket Oiler, patented in 1889, that was manufactured by Cushman & Denison of New York. The little gizmos were sold to dispense tiny drops of oil on household machinery, such as bicycles and sewing machines.
Unlike typical oilcans, the Perfect Pocket Oiler has some nice details.
The oil reservoir is all one piece so it cannot leak. Most oilcans are made from a base piece that is folded together with the sides. And they leak.
Instead of the oiler being just a reservoir and a nozzle, this has a clever spring-activated pump and seal. Nothing comes out of the tip until you press the ring around the nozzle down. Then capillary action dispenses a drop of oil.
A lid. So you can put it in your pocket without getting your privates oily (I realize some of you will actually see this as a disadvantage).
I don’t know who pressed this oiler into John’s hand at Handworks, but thank you. It’s getting some good use already because I loaned my two favorite oilers to Thomas Lie-Nielsen.
A fair number of tables from the Middle Ages and later appear to have a couple of extra pieces attached below the tabletop to thicken up the area where the leg tenons intersect the top. I call these “nubs” for lack of a better word, and they raise several questions.
These nubs are similar – very similar – to the battens in early stools and chairs found in Germanic cultures (I’ve also seen some in the Netherlands). Typically, these battens were attached to the seat using a sliding dovetail, they thickened the area for the joinery and they strengthened the thin seat. They strengthened the seat because the grain of the battens was 90° to the seat.
This grain arrangement is typically a Bozo No-No when it comes to wood movement, and a fair number of seats I’ve seen in Germany and American Moravian colonies have split. It’s also fair, however, to say that many have not split and even those that have split still work fine.
So are these Middle Age nubs attached with sliding dovetails? I can’t see any sliding dovetails in the paintings. Did they skip drawing the joinery? Many artists would draw in the wedged through-tenon joinery. But not the dovetails? Were they too small? Are the nubs parallel to or 90° to the grain? Again, many artists from the Middle Ages didn’t draw in the grain, so I don’t think we can answer this from paintings.
How were the nubs attached – if not by sliding dovetails? Were they simply captured between the shoulder of the leg’s tenon and the back-wedged joint above? My guess is this could work. Glue maybe? Nails? I’ve never seen any nails through the top in the paintings – though that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. They could have been driven in from the bottom – through the nubs.
“Writing a book is like driving a car at night. You only see as far as your headlights go, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
— E.L. Doctorow
I was pissfarting around with my combination square today when Megan Fitzpatrick stopped by the shop to pick up a manuscript to edit (it’s the Hayward Project, by the way). She looked curiously at the panel clamped in my face vise.
“That’s a huge sliding dovetail in this…uh, what is this thing?” she asked.
I gave her the simple answer: a table. But the real answer is something more like: The sum total of a thousand ideas about contemporary furniture design that are finally taking shape – thanks to a manuscript from the 15th century.
Let’s back up. The last six months of work have been incredibly unprofitable for me. I’ve delayed several upcoming commissions (apologies; you know who you are) and I haven’t completed a single piece of furniture to sell since December. Part of this is because I devoted big chunks of time to “Chairmaker’s Notebook” and “Virtuoso.” But I also stumbled on a bright string in the forest that has led me to design, prototype and build pieces that explore new territory for me. So commerce can wait.
The images with this entry are part of the story, but certainly not anything worth commenting on. If you think the legs are chunky, I suspect you don’t even know what you’re looking at just yet.
I hope to have this “table” prototype complete this week. Then I’ll post some finished photos and explain the piece a bit more.
