Lost Art Press

Author: meghanlostartpress

The History of the Acanthus Leaf in the Decorative Arts

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FIG. 1.16. A Greek capital, “Historic Ornament, A Pictorial Archive,” Dover Publications.


This is an excerpt from “Carving the Acanthus” by Mary May. 

Walking through a historical journey of the acanthus leaf has its challenges, as the different art periods often overlap and the styles frequently migrate from country to country. There are numerous volumes written on the history of decorative arts, and this brief explanation is not intended to be an exhaustive historical account. Focusing on the acanthus leaf and its significance in architecture and furniture,  we will follow the leaf as it evolves through each identifiable art period. At times, the design transition spans multiple years, and there are periods where this motif is nearly unrecognizable or almost disappears, only to regain in favor again in the following art period. There are certain art eras that I have omitted because of no evidence of acanthus leaf usage in their design. I hope this brief historical overview builds a curiosity and desire for further research and discovery.

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FIG. 1.14. Egyptian chair, “Handbook of Historic Ornament, From Ancient Times to Biedermeier,” Dover Publications.


THE EGYPTIANS (3200 BC TO 332 BC)
Ancient Egypt was not plentiful in trees, so the use of wood in furniture making was reserved strictly for the wealthy. Many of these pieces of furniture were well preserved in the low humidity of the Egyptian tombs. Native woods included acacia, sidder and fig, while ebony, cypress and cedar were imported from Syria and Lebanon. Ebony, ivory and bone were often combined with wood and overlaid with gold and silver. Lion paws, bull feet and goose and duck heads were carved into the legs of stools and armchairs. There is no evidence that acanthus leaves were a design element during this time in either furniture or architecture, but the lotus, papyrus and palm were common.

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FIG. 1.15. Example of traditional a Greek anthemion, “Handbook of Historic Ornament, From Ancient Times to Biedermeier,” Dover Publications.


THE GREEKS: (1600 BC TO 100 BC)
The art of furniture making, which often included woodcarving, was highly valued in ancient Greece. Influenced by Egypt and the Orient, much of the early furniture was ornately decorated with marble, bronze, inlaid ivory, ebony and precious stones. Because wood is not as durable as stone, few remaining examples of woodcarvings from this period are available, and are mostly made of cedar, cypress, oak, maple, beech, citrus and willow. Even the famous Greek author Homer remarked that car penters were “welcomed the world over.” There are examples of the legs of some of the couches  (“kline”) or chairs having carved animal legs and feet, with the backs shaped like a snake or horse head.

The first known example of the acanthus leaf as a decorative architectural element was in the  Corinthian capital, originating in Greece in the 5th century BC. Based on the anthemion design popular in Greek architecture, the first carved acanthus leaves contained sharp points, deeply carved corners and sharp ridges between the lobes, creating  clear shadow lines that were visible from a distance. Most examples of this early style of acanthus leaf are found as architectural stone carvings.

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FIG. 1.17. Roman carving, “Historic Ornament, A Pictorial Archive,” Dover Publications


THE ROMANS (146 BC TO 337 AD)
After Greece came under Roman rule in 146 BC, the Greek decorative arts were eagerly absorbed by the new Roman Empire. Evidence of early Roman wood carvings show that arms and legs of chairs and couches were often carved to represent the limbs of animals, while chair backs and table supports were of carved griffins or winged lions. Common motifs used in architectural details are the anthemion, the scroll, the rosette, the acanthus, birds, cupids and reptiles. Woods used in carved furniture during this period were cedar, pine, elm, ash, beech, oak, box, olive, maple and pear.

The Roman period produced a richer, more flexible acanthus leaf, where the sharp points of the Greek style became softened. With its endless and  varied possibilities, the acanthus leaf reflected the Roman love of art and beauty, and was incorporated into a wider range of decorative ornament.  The details of the leaf contained deep “eyes,” which represented holes where the different lobes  of the leaf overlap, and sharply defined ripples in the leaf, giving a dramatic feeling of movement. The leaf took on a more naturalistic feel, with the tip of the leaf often curling and twisting in a lifelike manner. From the Roman era on, there was scarce  a time where the acanthus leaf was not a significant part of Italian ornamental design.

— MB

Don’t Blow it on the Lid

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Lid-1
Miters and mayhem. The flat panel lid warped and shrank. The miters lost their hold. This lid is a mess.


This is an excerpt from “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” by Christopher Schwarz. 

There are several ways to make the lid. Some work great. Some are quite stupid. Let’s start with the stupid ways first. When I built my first tool chest, I copied the construction of the lid from an original. It was a single flat panel of wood trimmed on three of its edges with narrow stock that would interlock with the dust seal attached to the shell.

If I remember correctly, I think the lid worked as intended for about a week, and it has been bockety ever since. The first problem was with the lock strike, the brass plate mortised into the underside of the lid. Because the lid was a simple flat panel, the top shrank a bit, which moved the lock strike.

One day I tried to lock the chest, and the mechanism wouldn’t engage. In fact, it just pushed the lid up off the dust seal. So I filed the opening in the strike until the lock worked again. About six months later the top expanded and the lock wouldn’t work anymore. This time, filing wasn’t going to fix the problem – I would have filed away one wall off the strike. So I resigned myself to having a chest that would lock only during the dry season.

Then the top warped.

Because the top of the lid was the bark side of the tree, the warping made things worse. The front and back edges of the top curled up. And the movement was enough that the strike couldn’t be struck by the lock mechanism.

But my troubles didn’t end there. When I built the chest, I wasn’t a total doofus on the topic of wood movement. I knew the lid was going to move, so I selected a species that didn’t move a lot once it was dry. I used white pine. And when I applied the trim around the lid, I did everything I could to minimize the problem of cross-grain construction. The trim pieces on the ends of the lid were the problem. They had to be nailed onto the end grain.

This is a problem. Nails and screws don’t hold as tightly into end grain as they do into face grain. So I wanted to introduce some glue into the joint to help things along. of course, glue doesn’t want to stick to end grain. And when you glue long grain to end grain, the end grain will try to bust apart the joint as it expands and contracts with the seasons.

There are several solutions to this problem. Some involve a sliding dovetail. others involve screws in elongated slots. The simplest solution is to glue and nail the trim on at the front of the lid and use nails only at the back part of the lid. This was the technique that the original builder had used. The theory here is that the glue and nails will keep the trim secure and tight up at the miters, and the nails at the back of the lid will bend to allow the lid to move.

It’s an interesting theory and one that sometimes works. It sure didn’t work for me, however.

The trim is barely holding on to the lid. The miters are open and flopping around like a broken finger. And the lid’s joints look like crap. I want to remove the lid and rebuild it. I should remove it and rebuild it. But I really like the way the paint has aged on the lid, and the broken joints are a constant reminder about the wily ways of wood.

So when I set out to build a new chest, I looked for other historical examples that would be more durable. The vintage pine chest I bought had the trim glued and pinned to the underside of the lid. This had the advantage of removing the end grain from the equation. All the joints were long-grainto-long-grain. But this is still a bad way to build a lid. Instead of the trim coming loose, this lid is designed to split. And boy did the lid split. There is a 3/8″-wide canyon right up the middle of the lid, which invites dust inside. It’s such a problem that the best solution was to cover the split with tape to keep the dust out.

So don’t build your lid like that.

I took a look at other chests. Duncan Phyfe (1768-1854) was a smart guy, one of the most celebrated 19th-century cabinetmakers. And his tool chest, now at the New-York Historical Society, is filled with all manner of amazing tools. But the lid is curious. It’s a flat panel with breadboard ends. While the lid worked out for Duncan, it might not work out for you. Breadboard ends definitely can help things and improve the way a dust seal will attach to it. But it still won’t help things when you add lock hardware. It’s going to move forward and back as the panel expands and contracts.

Lid-2
Better lid. A frame-and-panel lid with a raised panel is about as robust as you can get without adding lots of weight.

Really, the best solution is to build the lid as a frame-and-panel assembly (or use a slab of Formica). This confines almost all of the wood movement to the panel that floats harmlessly in the middle of the rails and stiles. And if you choose quartersawn wood for the rails and stiles, they will barely move at all.

So you could build the lid in the same way you would build a raised panel door. I would recommend using through-tenons on the rails. But what about the panel? You want the panel to be thick and stout because it will take a beating. So the joint between the panel and the lid frame is critical. You don’t really want to thin down the edges of the panel as you would when making a door panel. Thin edges will weaken the panel.

The old-school solution here is to plow a groove in the edges of the panel so the panel will interlock with the rails and stiles. This will keep the joint between the panel and frame as stout as possible, and the panel will be raised above the frame of the lid.

There is no downside to this approach. There are no weak spots on the lid. There is no significant wood movement along the edges or ends of the lid. So the trim around it will stay put. It is as permanent as can be.

— MB

The Secrets of the Back Iron

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Fig-1
FIG. 1. DIAGRAMMATIC ILLUSTRATION OF HOW BACK IRON BREAKS SHAVINGS AND PREVENTS SPLITTING


This is an excerpt from “The Wordworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years: Volume I” published by Lost Art Press.

The back iron of the plane is of the utmost importance. It will often happen that, because it has not been given proper attention, the plane will not work properly, or possibly not work at all.

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FIG. 2. SINGLE IRON WORKING ON PARALLEL GRAIN

The function of the back iron is to control the condition of the shaving that the plane makes. Not that one minds what happens to the shavings, but that, in being removed, they have their effect on the surface of the wood. The power of the arms expended in making shavings is shared between cleaving off the part of the wood from the solid mass and in destroying its stiffness as it passes up into the mouth of the plane. A shaving would not pass comfortably up into the mouth of the plane if it were not fractured on its outside at fairly regular intervals, and it is the function of the back iron to do the fracturing.

Fig-3
FIG. 3. HOW SINGLE IRON TEARS GRAIN WHEN LATTER SLOPES DOWNWARDS
If all grain were parallel with the surface a back iron would never be needed (see Fig. 2). It is its slope that causes it to tear out

The breaking off of the shaving not only facilitates the removal of the shaving from the plane, but it does something that is even more important; it destroys the strength of the grain of the shaving, so that the natural tendency for the part that is removed to split off cleanly is checked.

To explain this by analogy, if a slice of a length of deal were chopped with an axe, the fact of the axe acting as a wedge would largely cleave off the piece as at A, Fig. 1. If the part already separated were snapped across by the introduction of a sort of back iron, the liability to split would be greatly lessened, as at B, Fig. 1. If we apply this illustration to the cutting iron and back iron of a plane, we shall see that the work of the back iron is to reduce the tendency to split.

This fracturing takes up a larger percentage of the energy expended than will at first be appreciated. As a consequence, the back iron is set close to the cutting edge only when the mixed nature of the grain renders it specially liable to tear out. Thus, quite a lot depends upon so arranging the back iron that it will give the results required with the most economical expenditure of time and labour. Time spent in planing can be very wasteful.

In planing off stout shavings of deal, the back iron is set well back, say, a full 1∕16 in. If the back iron were 1∕4 in. up, the curl in the shaving would not be sufficient and the grain might split out; probably a bare 1∕8 in. will be the utmost at any time that it will pay to keep the back iron up. One-sixteenth in. will, in practice, be satisfactory for an average run of work, especially so far as the jack plane is concerned. This distance will, however, be too much for material that is inclined to tear out, especially as the finishing stages are approaching. In fact, for a piece of curly grained mahogany, the back iron should be about 1∕64 in. only from the cutting edge.

A further important point regarding the back iron will be that there must be no flaws in it, for in the course of time the impact of the shavings against it is liable to cause this defect. With planes that are finely set, a certain slight jaggedness will at length appear along the edge of the back iron. This should be corrected with a fine file.

The back iron must also fit close down to its cutting iron when it is screwed in place; if there is the slightest space anywhere shavings will clog so that the plane will work both slowly and badly. Another point to remember is that the back iron should be a trifle round, so that the distance back from the cutting edge is parallel (for the edges of all cutting irons must also be slightly round).

— MB

Campaign Chests

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This is an excerpt from “Campaign Furniture” by Christopher Schwarz.

Brass-bound campaign chests that can be split into two parts are likely the most iconic pieces of the style – like the Morris chair of the Arts & Crafts movement. The archetypal British-made chest is mahogany with four rows of drawers, brass corner guards and flush brass pulls. Most chests would fit nicely into a box that is 40″ H x 40″ W x 22″ D.

However, there are lots of variants of campaign chests and details about their construction that you should consider as a maker when you plan to build your own. The following details apply to British-made chests. Campaign chests made in China or India are outside the scope of this book.

As far as dating the chests, a good rule of thumb is that earlier chests had fewer brass corner guards and used pulls that are “skeletonized.” That is, the early pulls look more like the classic swan’s neck type. In addition to the skeletonized pulls, there are also some early pulls that have pointed ends and other shapes. Early chests are also more likely to have moulding than a later chest, though the ornament is usually is more subdued than that on a high-style chest for domestic use.

Because early chests were more likely made as one-off pieces (and not in a manufactory), you are apt to see more variation in their design and construction. So you can encounter (or use) almost any joinery variant of the dovetail family.

Later chests in the mid-19th century became more standardized. More brass was added. The pulls became rectangular and fairly uniform among the manufacturers. From a builder’s perspective, these later chests are well built and are worth studying and reproducing.

Here are some other construction details of the chests, both early and late.

Campaign-Furniture3
Fig. 1.21 Paneled back. The frame of this back stiffens the carcases. The thin interior panels reduce the weight. These backs are more work to construct than a simple boarded back.


Backs of Campaign Chests
The backs of campaign chests can run the full gamut of techniques. I’ve seen frame-and-panel backs all the way down to backs that were simply nailed into a rabbet in the rear of the carcase.

A frame-and-panel back is by far the lightest in weight (because of the thin panels) and adds the most rigidity to the carcase, which is a frameless cabinet that benefits from the rigidity. You’ll also see backs that were paneled (usually via tongue-and-groove) and simple full panels that are inset into a rabbet or a groove. These options are preferred to a simple nailed- or screwed-on back.

Campaign-Furniture4
Fig. 1.22 Boarded back. This common form of back has the panels screwed into rabbets in the carcases. It is not as robust as a typical frame-and-panel assembly, but it is quick to execute. The grain typically runs horizontal on the backboards.

Corner Joinery
When it comes to the joinery, most of these chests were dovetailed at the corners. Except for the very top board of the cases (which were joined with full-blind dovetails), the remaining tops and bottoms were typically joined to the ends with half-blind (also called lap) dovetails.

On all the examples I’ve examined so far, the tail boards have been on the tops and bottoms, and the pin boards are on the ends of the carcases. This violates the typical practice of putting the tails on the end boards, which makes the joints stronger for lifting.

My guess is that this is for simplicity’s sake. With the tails on the tops and bottoms, these joints are laid out and executed exactly like cutting the joints for a drawer. If you put the tails on the end boards, removing the waste in the blind tails would be a little more difficult. But most of all, it would be a less-common way of cutting the joint.

The tops of campaign chests were typically joined to the ends with rabbeted full-blind dovetails. Details of this joint are covered in the chapter on building campaign chests. After pulling the drawers out of a number of these chests and poking around with a flashlight, I’ve found that for this joint, it was typical to put the tails on the end boards and the pins on the top. (You can easily discern this in a glued-up joint by paying attention to the overcuts from the dovetail saw and if they are angled or vertical.)

Sometimes the corners of the carcases will be joined with through-dovetails, though I haven’t seen many of these in the wild or in auction catalogs. There are also a few chests where all the joints are half-blind dovetails and you can see the tails on the top.

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Fig. 1.26 Inside a chest. You can see the web frame and dust panel inside this vintage campaign chest. Also, note the locations of the drawer stops, which keep the drawer front flush to the frame of the carcase.


Interior Joinery
Because these chests have to be strong, the interiors are usually mortise-and-tenon web frames with dust panels – again, first-class joinery. I’ve seen a few chests where the interior dividers are solid slab panels. These are simpler to build, but the slabs add weight.

The web frames are usually attached to the end boards with dados or, in some cases, sliding dovetails. You can tell which joint the maker used by removing the brass corner guards covering them.

As far as attaching the top case to the bottom case, it is typically done with two to four dowels that stick up on one of the cases and slide into matching holes in the other case. There are other methods of registering the top case on the bottom, including brass hardware that is incorporated into the corner guards, but I haven’t seen enough of these to know which other methods are typical and which are not.

— MB

Wedging Mortise and Tenon Joints

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The-Woodworker-Fig1
FIG. 1. A. AN OLD METHOD. Tenons and wedges were cut back in the stiles and a “pocket piece“ let in, making a first class finish. B. A BAD METHOD. Wedges are driven into the tenons themselves, causing splits


This is an excerpt from “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years: Volume III” published by Lost Art Press. 

“We’ll glue those wedges and tenons!” How often is this explanation heard when gluing up framed work. A usual response being to dip the wedges into the glue and drive them hard home, unless the wedges break off or bottom badly.

If we analyse the reason for wedging a joint we find that the wedges are provided to ensure a compression in the fibres of the tenons to equalise the inevitable movement due to age and conditions. At the same time it is necessary to provide a mortise with parallel sides for the tenon, so allowing for movement.

Take as an example a through mortised and tenoned wedged joint, the shoulders being tightly fitting to ensure rigidity in the work. In framing up we glue the shoulders and a small adjacent area only of the tenon, to allow the movement along the tenon (see Fig. 3 B). It will be obvious that to solidly glue the whole joint is defeating the essential object of that particular joint.

The logical method would be to glue the shoulders as usual, place the long grain edge of the wedge to the tenon, but do not glue (it may in fact be slightly greased), but gluing the remaining parts of the wedge into the mortise of the stile, making a parallel path for the tenon, but under compression. A joint made in this manner will not open at the shoulders.

The-Woodworker-Fig2
FIG. 2. DIAGONAL WEDGED TENONS IN THIN WOOD. This method is permissible in this case

In the case of double tenons, drive the outside wedges first to set the compression, the inner ones then being driven to equalise the compression on the tenons.

Good quality work of the old days had the tenons and wedges cut back in the stiles to allow for shrinkage clearance, and a pocket piece let in and flushed off in the stiles, making a workmanlike job (Fig. 1 A).

The-Woodworker-Fig3
FIG. 3. A. THE EFFECT OF WEDGES INSERTED IN THE TENON AND GLUING ALL OVER. Tenon is held at outer edge of stile and shrinkage takes place away from shoulder B. THE CORRECT METHOD. Wedges are placed between tenon and sides of mortise, and only the shaded area of tenon is glued. Shrinkage of stile can then take place at its outer edge, but shoulder holds firm


A Bad Fault. An odious method becoming prevalent to-day is tenon splitting and wedging the tenon out into a fantail in the mortise; it is apparent that the least shrinkage will pull the shoulders right open, when all rigidity in the work vanishes (see Figs. 1B and 3A).

Such a method is only permissible when diagonal wedging in thin material such as carcase construction, shelves to ends (Fig. 2), or in fox-wedging in the appropriate joints.

Selecting suitable joints and framing them up is a complicated matter at times, but consideration on the foregoing lines will amply repay the craftsman in the quality of the work he produces.

— MB