We are still actively looking for a building for Lost Art Press that will serve as a woodworking laboratory, a home for a burgeoning library, photo studio and a place to live.
I’m investigating properties in the Covington and Newport areas every month, but I am picky and am in no hurry. This will be the place where I hope to die while standing at my bench, so I want a lot of natural northern light for that event. Hardwood floors. Exposed brick.
But in the back of my mind I’ve always wondered about taking over the Gatehouse Tavern, a long-closed medieval-themed restaurant and bar that was built during the medieval restaurant craze of the 1970s.
The Gatehouse Tavern is on one of my running routes and is part of a massive complex of faux half-timbered restaurants, a hotel, convention center, salon, offices and swimming pools in Fort Mitchell, Ky. The hotel was called The Drawbridge, and it was one of the odd centers of community in our town. Elvis look-alike convention? They’d book the Drawbridge. Mannequin convention? Cross-stitching dominatrixes? Yup. All here.
In recent years, the Drawbridge had fallen on hard times and was closed sometime last year. They sold all the suits of armor, tapestries, wooden indians and wacky shields during a fire sale this fall.
The Gatehouse Tavern (or as I call it, Castle Brown) is on the edge of the campus. It has a moat – a fricking moat – plus giant doors. And some tiny towers from which we could defend the deep fryers. I always wondered what they would sell this derelict masterpiece for.
Now I’ll never know. They’ve chained off the entire campus to tear it down and redevelop it as something more modern.
In all my years of messing about with old workbenches and their holding devices, I haven’t had much experience with the “bench knife.”
In its original form, the bench knife is nothing more than a broken piece of a dinner knife. It is used to secure boards on the benchtop for planing their broad faces. You first butt one end of your work against a stop of some kind. To secure the hind end of the board, you hammer the bench knife into both the benchtop and the end grain of the work.
Edward H. Crussell’s fantastic curmudgeonly “Jobbing Work for the Carpenter” (1914) describes it thus:
The bench knife is a tool of every-day use in Europe, but is not so well known or used in America. It is nothing but a piece of the blade of an old dinner knife about 1-1/4 or 1-1/2 in. long, and is used in lieu of a nail for holding material on the bench. It is used at the opposite end to the bench stop, being driven partly into the bench and partly into the material, as shown in Fig. 257.
For thinner stuff it is driven deeper into the bench. It is easy to apply, can be readily removed with a claw hammer, and does not mar the bench or material so badly as other forms of fastening. It is a good idea to have two or three of these bench knives because it is so easy to mislay them in the shavings.
Thanks to the worldwide butter knife shortage of 1915, ironmongers had to come up with a replacement to the simple broken knife. Most of the solutions that I see in books are a contrivance that drops into a row of bench dogs at the rear of the bench (who has a row of dogs on the rear of the bench?). Then you pull a lever that slides a thin piece of metal across the benchtop and into the end grain of the work.
I think there’s a reason that I have yet to see one of these devices in the wild: They were stupid. If you have a row of bench dogs, you could probably come up with a better way to hold the work than a mechanical doo-dad like the bench knife.
But today I saw a bench knife that I would buy and try.
Advertised in a late 19th-century magazine, this bench knife clamps to the front edge of your workbench and is infinitely adjustable. The obvious downside to this thing is that benchtop thicknesses vary a lot (1-1/2” to 4” being typical). But beyond that detail, I think the thing looks pretty smart.
This week I’m working on a magazine article on coping saws and I’d like to include a few paragraphs about its ancestors and the development of the saw.
My view is that the modern coping saw is related to the marquetry saws of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. A metal frame that tensions a thin blade has been a part of woodworking for about 500 years. However, if you have any evidence that I’m off base (evidence and not speculation, please, I get enough of the former), I’d like to hear from you.
Here is the rough draft of this short section. And thanks in advance!
— Christopher Schwarz
A Quick History of Coping Saws
While frame saws likely were invented by the Romans, it wasn’t until veneered marquetry was developed in the 16th century that the delicate bow saws required for the intricate work appeared.
In 1676, André Félibien published a drawing of a petite sie de marqueterie that looks all the world like a modern coping saw – you can even see that the teeth point away from the handle.
By the 18th century, these sorts of saws were sometimes called “Morris saws” – perhaps it was a bastardization of the word “Moorish” or relates to the inlaid game board for an old game called “Nine Men’s Morris.” These saws were used for all sorts of intricate cuts, both by cabinetmakers and jewelers. And the saws had blades designed to cut not only wood, but tortoise shell, brass and other semi-precious materials.
In the 19th century, the saws were commonly called “bracket saws,” and during the middle part of the century there developed quite a fretwork craze – you find advertisements for the saws and plans in publications that have nothing to do with woodwork, such as The Pacific Tourist and Beautiful Homes magazines.
Soon the saws spread to the schools, where 19th-century craft-based schools using the Sloyd system taught handwork that was based around using a knife, a “frame compass saw” and other simple tools. By the early 20th century, the saw had acquired its modern name, “coping saw,” as carpenters found the tool handy for coping inside miters when cutting moulding.
Historical purists might not agree that the coping saw is a descendant of the early marquetry saw, but from a user’s perspective these saws are functional equivalents: a metal frame that tensions a thin blade that is used for curved and intricate cuts.
“You can have art in your daily life if you want it, but you don’t. You prefer fountain-pens and motor cars.”
— Eric Gill, the creator of the Gill Sans typeface, as quoted in “Country Craftsmen” by Freda Derrick (1945)
Since the day my wife and I started work as newspaper reporters, we have collected what is called “outsider art.” The broad definition of the term is that it’s art made by people who lack formal artistic training. Usually, these people also have some sort of quirk or disability that shapes the way they see the world.
We first learned about this style of art from Mary Praytor, who runs a gallery on Main Street in Greenville, S.C. My wife and I would walk up there from the office of The Greenville News and Mary would tell us about all of the artists from her rotating stock. We were captivated. And, just as important, we could afford a few pieces. And so Lucy and I ate hot dogs plus mac and cheese in box so we could purchase our first pieces – two magic marker drawings on Formica by R.A. Miller.
Twenty-four years later, our house is filled with the stuff. I know a lot of visitors think our taste is odd (“It’s so cool that you have your childrens’ drawings on every wall,” is a common comment.) But I find this work important to me as both a writer and a woodworker.
Here’s why.
Whether you know it or not, newspaper journalism is one of the most formal and highly structured types of communication. I find it suffocating, and yet I cannot for the life of me shake loose from my four-year brainwashing. Even as I write this condemnation, I am paring back the words as I type, selecting simpler sentence structures and arranging things in series of threes to regulate the cadence.
So the outsider art is a visit to a place I cannot go. What does it look like to be a painter who doesn’t follow rules of composition, color and perspective? What if you didn’t start out by painting a bowl of fruit? And – most importantly – what does it look like if you do all these things without trying to do all these things?
With my woodworking, I had a glimpse of this non-formal approach. When I made my first pieces, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, and I didn’t know that it mattered. I designed my pieces around my materials, my needs and what “looked kind of good.” I didn’t know there were rules for joints, unsupported spans or proportions.
Of the pieces I built, only about one in four was a success. The other three were recycled into something else or went to the fireplace. It wasn’t until I started work at Popular Woodworking in 1996 that I realized that .250 was a lousy batting average.
And so began my indoctrination into the rules of the craft. Like my journalism training, I am grateful for the knowledge. It puts food on the table, speeds my time in the shop and ensures my batting average is near 1.00. But the knowledge is also stifling to the design process.
The art around our house keeps me off-balance. I love it.
I don’t suspect these images will have the same effect on you, but I put them up here in the hope that you might think about the non-formal approach to the craft and how that relates to the “furniture of necessity.”
R.A. Miller
We own four R.A. Miller pieces (actually three; my daughter won one from me in a card game). Miller lived a half-day’s drive from us in Greenville, and we tried to go visit him once. This was in 1990 (pre-GPS), and we got turned around and lost.
The two Formica pieces we purchased are my favorites. One is a self-portrait of Miller yelling “Blow Oskar” to his uncle – asking his uncle to sound his horn as he drove by. The second piece is of Satan.
Though we were never able to visit Miller, two of our friends managed to find his place and bought some pieces from him where the paint was still wet.
Miller is also known for his animal, snake and dinosaur cutouts in metal.
Howard Finster
Howard Finster is probably one of the best-known artists of this genre and his “Paradise Garden” is an amazing place to visit. Lucy and I went there one weekend in 1991 and spent the day wandering around. We hoped to meet Miller, but he wasn’t around that day. So we got to spend the afternoon chatting with his family.
We purchased these two pieces for $35 each (and I think they knocked $5 off the total).
“Paradise Garden” is being restored and is open to the public. If you are ever in the Summerville, Ga., area you should go. It was built entirely by his hands and is jaw-dropping in its beauty and complexity.
Barbara Moran
I first encountered Barbara Moran’s work during a street festival in Cincinnati. The festival was put on by the Visionaries + Voices foundation, which seeks to cultivate artists with disabilities. In my view, the program is a stunning success, and it has made the city a hotbed of outsider artists.
Moran’s drawings were all in a pile – there must have been 50 or more. Many of them were of people who had their heads shaped as buildings. Or there were stoplights that walked. And a train with a person’s face, if I remember right.
I should have bought the whole pile. I was totally mesmerized.
But I just bought this piece, which hangs over me whenever I write.
Raymond Thunder-Sky
Raymond Thunder-Sky was one of Cincinnati’s best known outside artists. He was known as the “construction clown” because he would dress up in a clown outfit, don a hard hat and walk onto construction sites in Cincinnati. There he would record the events on the site.
I met Raymond once on the streets downtown. At the time I had no idea he was an artist.
I love his pieces, and I wish I could afford an original – they are hard to come by. My family bought me two prints from the gallery that now bears his name.
T7D
This guy is a volunteer at Visionaries + Voices and outsider artist himself. I’ve met him a few times, but I cannot recall his name. This chalk image, called “fuel,” is in my office.
The artist is well-known for his paintings of elephants and superheroes. I hope to run into him again.
To mark the release of “Campaign Furniture” next month, we’ll be releasing this T-shirt design, which amuses even my wife.
The front features a campaign-style chest of drawers from the 1909 catalog of the Army & Navy Co-operative Society. And on the back…
We’re using 100-percent cotton American Apparel shirts (made in Los Angeles) in an army green with white lettering. The shirts (4.3 oz. cotton) are printed by a small family-run firm in Noblesville, Ind. The shirts will be $20, plus first-class shipping in the United States.
Please note: Mouth-breathing hipster not included.
The shirts might be available a few days before the book. As the shirts will ship separately from the book (thank you, media mail regulations), we’ll likely put them up on the site a few days early so you can be wearing the shirt on the day your book arrives. I know no one will do that. It’s just too dorky to contemplate. OK, I’ll be doing that.
