Mark your calendar for Saturday, Sept. 8. Joshua Klein of Mortise & Tenon Magazine is coming all the way from Maine to celebrate the release of his book “Hands Employed Aright.” Josh will be around the shop during our open day and during a book reading and party that evening.
Y’all are invited – of course. We’ll have a page where you can RSVP shortly. But we’ll make room for everyone who wants to come to this special event.
More details to come in short order.
— Christopher Schwarz
The printing plant reports that Joshua Klein’s “Hands Employed Aright” was put on a truck yesterday and is headed to our Indianapolis warehouse. If all goes to plan, the book should arrive next week, and we will begin shipping out orders as soon as our warehouse can set up a special assembly line to fill pre-publication orders.
If you would like to order a book that will go out with the first batch, there’s still time. Visit our store here. The book is $57.
All of us, including Joshua I’m sure, are excited and relieved that we’ve reached this point with the book, which took many years of labor for Joshua to research and write.
“Hand Employed Aright” is a rare peek into the life of an early American woodworker through his extensive diaries, his tools and the furniture he left behind. The book is gorgeously illustrated with Klein’s photographs, plus historical paintings and letters.
The last time the world saw a book such as this was Charles Hummel’s landmark “With Hammer in Hand.”
No matter what sort of woodworker you are, I think you’ll be fascinated by this intimate portrait of Jonathan Fisher as he built his life on the frontier in the 18th century.
— Christopher Schwarz
I’ve read Joshua Klein’s new book “Hands Employed Aright” at least five times to complete the index and also for pleasure. It is one of my favorite books I’ve read so far this year.
To say that Jonathan Fisher, the subject of the book, was an industrious man is an understatement. He was at various and overlapping times: artist, author, builder (of house, barn, workshop), clockmaker, cooper, furniture maker, hat maker, linguist, lock maker, pipe (of the drainage type) maker, surveyor, toolmaker and turner. Oh, I know there are several more I left out. He did all this as the husband of Dolly, the father of nine children and the Congregationalist minister for his frontier community of Blue Hill, Maine. Fisher was also, as were many men of his time, a prolific diarist.
The primary materials available to Joshua included a huge volume of diary entries, Fisher’s house, letters, publications, artwork, furniture and tools held in several collections in Maine. Such an abundance of primary materials, although welcome, can be daunting for a researcher. What to cull and what to keep? What patterns emerge? Details that might be fascinating or endearing to the researcher may not advance the themes intended for the final manuscript.
For five years Joshua Klein dove in and swam with Fisher. He read the letters and the diaries, studied the furniture, tools and other items (some of which remain to be identified). He consulted with Don Williams and other experts. He tried to absorb how Fisher combined the strength of his mind and faith with his oftentimes weak body, yet skillful hands, to produce such a prodigious output.
Along the way Joshua was able to solve a few puzzles. Using old photographs taken prior to the destruction of the Fisher barn he figured out that some of the bits and pieces were one of Fisher’s lathes. And in his shop-based research – a chapter worth the price of admission – Joshua demystifies the odd mouse-shaped totes on many of Fisher’s planes. He explores working on a low workbench and learned several new approaches to his own woodworking.
You do not have to be a woodworker to enjoy this book. It is also a social and economic history of life on the American frontier. It is a continuation of the story that began with James Rosier’s account of the European discovery of Maine in 1605 (when Maine was part of the then vast colony of Virginia). The illustrations of Fisher’s artwork and designs and photographers of his home and furniture are plentiful and stellar.
Joshua Klein’s abilities as a researcher shine in this book. He has distilled a tremendous amount of information and observation into a cogent history of the life and talents of the fascinating Jonathan Fisher. Joshua also acknowledges the research is not over and very generously ends his book with a detailed catalog of all of Fisher’s furniture (including pieces attributed to him) and tools for potential use by others.
Joshua used a quote by Jonathan Fisher as the title for his book. I think “Hands Employed Aright” is an apt description of Joshua’s work, too.
— Suzanne Ellison
The images used in the collage: top row is a portion of ‘A morning view of Blue Hill’ by Fisher, Farnsworth Art Museum. 2nd row (left & middle) coopering plans, Fisher’s diary, both from the Jonathan Fisher Memorial; clock face, Farnsworth Art Museum. 3rd row (middle) detail from Fisher’s 1825 self portrait, Blue Hill Congregational Church; back saw, desk and bookcase, slat-back chair and fore plane are from the Farnsworth Art Museum. 4th row (middle) chest for tool storage and wooden screw, Farnsworth Art Museum; painting of the barn and workshop (top left), woodblock print and shaving horse (right) all by Fisher in the collection of the Jonathan Fisher Memorial; the yellow house (bottom left) is the Fisher home. Bottom row is the top of Fisher’s low workbench, Jonathan Fisher Memorial.
This is an excerpt from “Hands Employed Aright: The Furniture Making of Jonathan Fisher” by Joshua A. Klein.
The first chair Fisher recorded making was in December 1802. This “small chair,” probably for children, seems to have been a trial run for him because a couple weeks after its completion, he began to equip his work shop for a more efficient workflow. He “made a rack (a bending form) for chair backs.” And “made a shaving [?] jack” (probably his shaving horse). With these two appliances, Fisher could refine his chairmaking process by “[making] several chair frames” before undertaking the production of a set of “kitchen” chairs in 1805.
Nancy Goyne Evans’s research into the New England usage of the term “kitchen chair” has shown that it refers to a slat-back side chair. Fisher’s documentation of the construction of these chairs concurs with that assessment.
February 1805 he made four “little” chairs probably for his four children who would need them: Jonathan, Sally, Betsey and Josiah. Having his children’s sitting needs taken care of, he set out to build the full-size versions. The first one he made that March did not work out well. “Worked upon a chair; broke it putting it together. Began another.” This comment is interesting because it suggests that the method of assembly Fisher used to make his chair required significant force such that there was risk of completely ruining it. When driving the tenons of the rails and stretchers in the “green” legs, it was common practice to make the fit incredibly tight. This way, when the leg dried out, it would pinch the tenon from coming out. Having not yet developed the feel for “how far was too far,” Fisher perhaps fractured one or more members.
The slat-back chair (Cat#16, p 161) in the Fisher collection shows evidence of this kind of assembly. The tenons all have small flats carved on their sides. This technique was a way to remove material on the legs’ cross-grain direction while allowing the top and bottom of the tenon to be oversized when driven in. If the orientation of the flats were reversed (meaning on top and bottom), the driving would split the leg due to the extra thickness of the oversized tenon running cross-grain. This is perhaps where Fisher made his early mistake. The method appears to work incredibly well because although the only pins in the entire chair are in the top slat, it has no wiggle whatsoever – pretty amazing for a 200-year-old chair.
Fisher’s shop work during this time on chairs seems a little more focused than usual. Although he made a few visits and “wrote upon sermons” like always, he set aside a surprising amount of time to this batch of chairs.
Tuesday, April 2, Fisher recorded many of the steps of the chairmaking operation: “Primed some chairs. Went into the woods and cut a little chair stuff. Turned posts and put together a kitchen chair.” During the ensuing weeks of construction, we learn that he “hewed out [his] posts” before turning them. He may have also used his “shaving jack” for further shaping but only ever recorded using it to “shave … chair backs.” Interestingly, there is a comment on April 19 about “sawing out a few chair backs.” Typically “sawing out” refers to resawing rough material. So it appears that rather than rive backs from the log, he preferred to saw them.
After they were assembled, he painted the chairs, probably with the “1-1/2 gal. oil, 5 lbs. yellow ochre, 5 lbs. red ochre, 1 lb. patent yellow” he purchased from Mr. Witham’s store at the head of the bay during the construction process.
The “bottoming” (seat weaving) of Fisher’s chairs always appears to be connected to the pounding of “basket stuff.” The fact that he didn’t mention weaving baskets after the prep work but instead immediately began weaving the seats seems to imply that they were woven of wood strips rather than the twisted rushes one would expect in northern New England.
— MB
You can now place a pre-publication order for Joshua Klein’s “Hands Employed Aright: The Furniture Making of Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847).” The book is $57, which includes domestic shipping, and should ship to customers in early or mid-August.
All pre-publication orders placed through the Lost Art Press store will receive a pdf download of the book at checkout. After the book ships, the pdf will cost extra.
“Hands Employed Aright” is the culmination of five years of research into the life of Jonathan Fisher. Fisher was the first settled minister of the frontier town of Blue Hill, Maine. Harvard-educated and handy with an axe, Fisher spent his adult life building furniture for his community. Fortunately for us, Fisher recorded every aspect of his life as a woodworker and minister on the frontier.
In this book, Klein, the founder of Mortise & Tenon Magazine, examines what might be the most complete record of the life of an early 19th-century American craftsman. Using Fisher’s papers, his tools and the surviving furniture, Klein paints a picture of a man of remarkable mechanical genius, seemingly boundless energy and the deepest devotion. It is a portrait that is at times both familiar and completely alien to a modern reader – and one that will likely change your view of furniture making in the early days of the United States.
This hardbound, full-color book will be produced entirely in the United States using quality materials and manufacturing methods. You can get a sample of the writing, photography and design of the book via this excerpt.
You can place your order for “Hands Employed Aright” here.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. As always, we do not know which of our retailers plan to carry this book – it’s their decision; not ours. We hope that all of them will stock it. Contact your nearest retailer for more information.