Category: To Make as Perfectly as Possible, Roubo Translation

Craftsman W. Patrick Edwards recently made an interesting video on marquetry in conjunction with the Art Institute of Chicago. Patrick discusses the video, which you can view at his site, and also explores the history of the “chevalet” – a saw guide that assists the craftsman.

Very good stuff and worth watching.

Read about (and watch) the videos here.

Read about the chevalet here.

— Christopher Schwarz

The most modern of these different works are at least of the last century, and we don’t make them now because they say: This is not in style. As if that which is really beautiful [is] not forever, and that works of sculpture and or gold, often very mediocre (as is made too often nowadays), were preferable to chefs-d’oeuvre of the last century, for which we have no regard for any more, and for which we have substituted elegant super-abundance, which has no other merit than being of the passing style, which is soon erased by another, which doesn’t even exist longer than the caprice of those who have invented it.

— A.J. Roubo, “L’Art du Menuisier”

Editor’s note: The below entry is part of a series of articles we have commissioned Brian Anderson to write about André Roubo in preparationd for the publication of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.” Brian, the translator for “Grandpa’s Workshop,” also wrote this entry on Roubo’s famous dome.

It must have been a popular topic for the local gossips – the apprentice joiner André Roubo begging, here and there, a cup of lard or tallow from the taverns and housewives in the Paris neighborhood.

A boy from a poor family begging a cup of lard for his mother to cook, would have been one thing. But the young André did not want it to cook with, but to fuel a simple oil lamp for light to study by. At the time, in the 1750s, it would have been rare enough for an ordinary worker to even know how to read. Spending money on  learned books on geometry, mathematics, perspective and design and then plowing through them would have been a scandal in itself.

Roubo had been born in 1739 into a working class family. His father was a joiner, but according to the noted French architect, Louis-Auguste Boileau, who wrote a short biography of Roubo in 1834, the father was a worker of the crudest sort. The young man, apprenticed to his father at 12 or so, soon realized both that he loved the theory and practice of joinery, and that if he did not want to spend his life doing the lowest sorts of work for pennies a day, he would have to figure a way up and out himself.

Boileau wrote that he threw himself into his studies, going hungry sometimes to purchase his first books out of the pittance his father allowed him for his work. The young joiner attracted the notice of others with his enthusiasm, talent and thirst for learning as he worked for his father, eventually becoming a joiner in his own right.

But his big break came when a noted architect, Jean-Francois Blondel, took Roubo under his tutelage and gave him free tuition to his well-regarded school of architecture in Paris.

For five years, Roubo worked in his trade during the day; and then evenings, weekends, every free moment available, he spent pouring over the lessons Blondel set out for him. Mathematics, mechanics, perspective, design, different types of drawing. Plus, the building blocks of architecture, which also gave him enormous insight into his own trade.

Roubo proved as apt at these studies as he had at the practice of joinery, but Boileau notes that unlike some presented with a similar opportunity, Roubo apparently loved his craft. He loved to work wood, and was not tempted to move “up” into architecture.

Blondel was also a practicing architect, and a member of the French Academy of the Fine Arts, and his young protégé also proved adept at extending his circle of acquaintances from the people he met through the school and among the architect’s circles of friends and colleagues.

These connections would later prove invaluable, as Roubo’s thoughts turned from his studies to writing his own books.

— Brian Anderson

Fish glue is the best that one can use for gluing hard woods and metals. It is made with the skin, nervous and mucilaginous parts of certain large fish [sturgeon], which are found in the Russian seas. It is in the north where fish glue is made, from where the English and the Dutch bring it to us, especially from the Port of Archangel, where it is a good business. Good fish glue has hardly any odor, and should be of a white color, clear and transparent. One must pay attention that is not contaminated, that is, mixed of heterogeneous parts.

To make fish glue melt, you take it in the following manner: You begin by cutting the hard, dry glue in little pieces, then you put it in a clay pot or a glass vessel with good brandy, noting that the latter covers the glue. Then you bottle up the vessel, which one must fill only half full, and you put it all on hot cinders just until the glue dissolves perfectly. Or, you can cut the glue as above, and you soak it in the brandy until it has softened, then you make it melt in a double boiler, as is normally done.

There are workers who, instead of brandy, put the fish glue in ordinary water to which they add a garlic clove. This is rather good, but is not the same as brandy, to which one can add a bit of garlic, which can only augment the strength of the glue.

One can do the same thing with good English glue; that is to say, put [it] in brandy and garlic. I have done it many times, and that has always been successful for me.

— A.J. Roubo