Perhaps because it is such an everyday material many people do not realise the importance of PAPER as a munition of war – not merely newspaper, but paper and cardboard of every kind. It is used in the manufacture of shell containers, fuse components, mines, radio sets, machine-gun belts, etc. and it is needed now. Woodworkers can make a definite contribution by using shavings to light their fires, and saving the paper. They can also exchange shavings for paper with their neighbors and add to the collection of paper to be used directly for the war effort.
We therefore appeal to all readers to go carefully through their rooms, drawers and cupboards and turn out every scrap of unwanted paper. Stack it in a dry place, and separate white paper from cardboard and brown paper. All local councils have organised schemes for collection. Please then do it now.
— The Woodworker, January 1942. The exhortation to turn in all unneeded paper is on page 4; the graphic is on page 5.
Most of us are haunted throughout our lives by the wide gap between what we feel we could do and the little we actually accomplish. “Man’s reach is wider than his grasp.” As children we embarked eagerly on cherished projects and when we failed from the lack of experience and skill were daunted and exasperated by our impotence. To feel within oneself the power to do a thing and then to make a hash of it!
Later, when our fingers had gained skill the problem posed itself in a different form. We might now have the knowledge and at least sufficient confidence to do a good job, but still there was something that eluded us, some secret vision of perfection to which, in spite of many efforts, we failed to attain. The trouble with perfection is that it looks so misleadingly simple, but the cost is high. We can spend quite a considerable part of our lives discovering just how high and that unless we are prepared to pay the price perfection will continue to elude us. Recently I came across a mathematician who, so that he might demonstrate some mathematical law to his class had made a wooden model which, in order to function, needed an upright board, grooved in zigzags set at certain angles, down which tiny balls cascaded to operate the model. It was not the main part of the model, merely the necessary prelude which made the demonstration possible, yet it had taken him, he said with a smile, three hundred hours to make. The wood was unpolished but so glossily smooth, with perfection in each incisive line along which the little balls capered, that it had a beauty all of its own. Obviously it had been a labour of love and infinite patience.
Usually it is our impatience that defeats us. There are so many other distractions tugging at us that it is difficult to devote ourselves unswervingly to one particular bit of creative work with the unhurried effort that a first-class job takes and we are content to give less than our best. The craftsman’s best needs something more than an acquired skill of fingers sufficiently well trained not to mar a job with rash, impatient movements. It needs besides an attitude of mind that can sustain a prolonged effort with enjoyment and when a man takes pleasure in his work for its own sake he has acquired the true craftsman spirit which makes the best work possible.
Even so, we have to accept our human limitations. They are different with every individual man, divergencies of talent, of temperament, of circumstances which must inevitably produce differences of achievement. The temptation is strong to say: “Ah, if I was that man, or had that gift, or that opportunity, I should do very differently.” Should we, I wonder? If, instead of sighing for the moon, we accept ourselves as we are, with our own gifts and potentialities, our own weaknesses and faults of temperament, and set ourselves to do the best creative work that lies inside of us in spite of them, we shall work with an awareness of ourselves that will be half the battle. The naturally impatient man has more patience to learn than his less impulsive brother, the man who yields so easily to discouragement has to make up his mind to grit his teeth and hand on and that “it’s dogged as does it.” We are all these things by turn and at times but in each of us the proportion is different. We are each, as it were, our raw material and by working creatively and setting ourselves to do good work we are shaping and making ourselves as well as the thing we do. In this way alone can we discover our hidden potentialities by learning to do the things which can give them release. It is their presence within us which gives us from childhood upwards that sense of power to do things which, given no outlet, may well prove illusory.
Lack of confidence or an impossible ambition may both cause failure but if we work realistically, accepting ourselves as we are, confidence will come or vaulting ambition learn a moderation that leads to success. As the power of achievement grows, we shall find that we have it in us to do work stamped with our own distinctive character, because character develops inevitably with the things we do, and that we shall be making a contribution in itself unique to our surroundings.
The only fatal thing is to give up trying, to allow that sense of innate ability to become submerged, turning to a feeling of frustration and finally indifference. By so doing we shall cheat ourselves of some of the best things in life.
Once started on the good road to craftsmanship there is no knowing where a man will stop. One thing has an odd way of leading to another, interests and accomplishments grow and thrive by the way. To the end of our days we shall probably feel conscious of the things we might have done and did not, but in so far as we were willing to pay the price of achievement we shall have something to show for having lived.
— Charles H. Hayward, The Woodworker, April 1955 issue (paintings dug up by Jeff Burks)
The way of experience is to hold firmly to the knowledge that the end is in the beginning, and that each stage contributes its own share to the final perfection of the job as we want it to be. Taking it so, we can enjoy each stage for its own sake and resist the urge to scamp, which is also fatal. At first it will need a great deal of self-restraint. We do not take kindly in these days to anything requiring that kind of patience. Very few men are brought into contact with work that has old craft traditions, and it is by seeing an old craftsman in action and the infinite care he takes over every detail that is most readily acquired. But because woodwork is a very ancient craft and the use of creative skill is part of man’s inheritance, the right kind of approach will in the end come naturally enough to the man who sets out determined to acquire it. This does, in actual skill and artistry, take him a good many stages ahead of the sculptor, for instance, of today, who is capable of twisting a few strips of metal and labelling them “Man” or “Woman” or whatever name he fancies. The woodworker knows perfectly well it is no good trying such a trick and labelling it “chair” and being forced to meet his problems honestly with as much skill and artistry as he can command, he develops both.
The craftsman’s world does indeed carry within itself all the elements of wider living. In the everyday world we have the same need to be sure of our beginnings; the same need of standards which must be adhered to if we are going to a maturity that knows both freedom and wisdom and a sense of direction. A man is only truly free when, like the good craftsman, he adheres staunchly to the good he knows and builds the good life upon it. The house that has no secure foundation will soon totter and fall, but although we say stoutly enough that only a fool would think otherwise, how often do we fail to apply the practical wisdom which our tools teach us to the management of our own lives. For the rules that appear to limit and bind stand as guides along the highway, safeguarding us from the waste and misuse of the material of our lives — our gifts and talents, our health and strength, and relationships with others. And the true freedom which is the freedom to use our powers to their best and fullest extent, comes from observing them.
— Charles H. Hayward, The Woodworker, March 1955 issue (photo courtesy of Jeff Burks)
The modern craftsman is in a far happier state than the modern painter or sculptor, so much of whose work seems to have lost touch with reality. Not for the craftsman the strange, erratic impulses which would bid him present a chair looking like some queer mastodon from the past. He is tied inexorably to facts. The chair he makes must have stability and a measure of comfort because it is made for someone to sit on, and a person who discovered he was expected to sit on some kind of revolving hippopotamus might turn into a very severe critic indeed. So the chair must be made with precision and care, conforming to certain rules which will act as a brake on his imagination – and even a craftsman’s imagination can have its wilder moments – and will keep him, willy nilly, tethered to the world of common sense and reality. And it is good for us to be so tethered. It is the world for which and in which we are working, whose needs we share and to whose ideas of graciousness and beauty we have it in our power to make some contribution. But only if we are willing to work within the framework it imposes.
It is in this way we attain full freedom to do our best creative work. If we make a table, for instance, giving insufficient care to exact measurements and the accurate fitting of the joints, the results will be a rickety article which will inevitably lessen our chances of making a good finished job of it. For who can put his whole heart into the artistic finish of a thing which is constantly lurching under his hand, and will, moreover, perversely defy all attempts at last-minute remedies. It may even be difficult to find the fault, so small may have been the inaccuracies which, added together, have resulted in a piece of furniture in which its maker can feel no pride and which will be a constant source of irritation to everyone who tries to use it. And so he learns to be sure of his beginnings; that he has first to be accurate and careful, combining knowledge and skill to produce a sound piece of work suited to its purpose before adding the finer, decorative touches which will give shape and reality to his imaginings.
It is here, of course, that the amateur so often fails. He is in such a hurry to reach the “nice” work at the end, when the piece will be assembled and only awaits finishing, that he goes through the preliminary stages at best grudgingly, and it is in these stages that his troubles begin.
— Charles H. Hayward, The Woodworker, March 1955 issue (photos courtesy of Jeff Burks)
Charles H. Hayward was one of the greats. As editor of The Woodworker magazine he was the standard-bearer for handwork in the 20th century. We have spent eight years scanning and editing his work to present two volumes of “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years.” We think you will enjoy these books even more if you learn a little about Hayward’s life. Part I of this series is here.
Many of the old houses in Shoreditch were in an appalling state of disrepair, for although built originally as humble dwelling houses in long terraces, their use as workshops had resulted in shocking deterioration. Woodwork was innocent of paint, locks were frequently broken and replaced by padlocks and staples, an inner doors were invariably missing altogether. Stair treads were reduced to paper thickness, and no one saw the necessity for handrails – indeed they would have been in the way when timber or furniture had to be taken up or down. I have since wondered how they ever escaped being burnt down, for quite frequently, when a man had a veneering job to do he would light a shaving blaze to heat his cauls almost beneath the staircase.
In the shops around the district you could buy anything needed in furniture making. Veneers were available in consecutive leaves both knife – and saw – cut, in mahogany, walnut, oak, and many of the decorative hardwoods. There were also bundles of off-cuts, and sheets of marquetry in both 18th century patterns and (then) modern designs; ready-made turnings and legs of all kinds were commonplace. There were dozens of stores where metal fittings of all kinds were available; and there were polish houses where every kind of french polish and stains could be obtained; scotch glue (usually in cakes to be broken up); and of course there were tool shops where Norris planes were almost commonplace, and believe it or not, you could still buy a wooden hand-brace with brass strengthening pieces let flush into the wood.
My own very early workshop life in the pre 1914 days was in a workshop near Victoria. We reckoned ourselves as “West End” and were inclined to speak in a superior way when talking about Shoreditch, though in fact some very fine cabinet work was turned out in some of its workshops. Nearly all of our work was antique either reproduction or “fake”, and I use that latter term in a general sense, since it is often difficult to decide when a thing is an outright form of forgery or has been altered in some way, possibly to save it from further deterioration. We did a mixed class of work. The more skilled craftsmen were engaged on first class cabinets – shaped front sideboards, pieces with elaborate barred doors, and in addition was a whole range of good quality but relatively simple items.
Memory is a curious thing. Even when it is retentive it can play curious tricks, not only with past events but in the way we come to regard bygone happenings. Sometimes something which at the time was distressful or painful can in retrospect be wrapped around with a sort of protective padding which softens the picture it conjures up. Not that all the past was really one-sided, but that it is only natural to recall the better aspects of things and forget that almost everything has its less perfect side.
Perhaps the chief difference between the attitude of life then and that of today was that things then seemed to be in a settled state forever. We thought and acted as though the next few decades would see us in the same workshop, and quite likely at the same bench. There might be a few minor events such as a man changing his job, or possibly being sacked (redundancy was unknown in those days), but such things were trivialities and did not affect our general way of life.
Not that we didn’t argue about things in general, often in a heated way. Politics and religion, I recall, were the chief subjects, and opinions, frequently backed with maledictory or profane references, were hurled across the workshop from one end to the other. But such observations were frequently so much hot air, and were accepted as a sort of buffer against the tedium of things in general.
So life went on in sort of a jog-trot way to the accompaniment of the inevitable workshop noises of hammering, sawing, and planing with the occasional whine of the machine planer in the shop below, until the bell was rung for breakfast or tea break when a sort of uncanny silence descended on the workshop, argument and chatter being suspended by a sort of unspoken agreement in the immediate business of making and drinking tea and eating sandwiches. These intervals in general workshop life were largely a necessity in those days for we worked quite long hours. In summer time the working day started at 7am, with a break of half an hour for breakfast at 8 o’clock, then on till 1pm when the shop closed for an hour. The day finished at 6pm. It was varied in winter by a start at 8 am, finishing at 7 pm but with the breakfast break replaced by a tea interval.
Some of the men came from quite a distance such as Surbiton, and must have left at 5:30 to catch the 6 o’clock train. Even so there was a walk of about a quarter of an hour at the end of the journey. I still recall the scene outside the workshop door in the early morning. I myself arrived on a bike, but nearly all the men either walked or came by tram, and stood about in doorways or leaned against railings, awaiting the arrival of the foreman to unlock the door. Five minutes later the door was locked again and any unlucky late arrival had to kick his heels in the knowledge that an hour’s pay would be deducted from his pay packet at the end of the week. Indeed I have heard some choice, imperfectly smothered epithets uttered by an unhappy latecomer as he arrived panting only to find the door locked.
