Joshua Klein’s biography of Jonathan Fisher, “Hands Employed Aright,” needs only a few tweaks today before it goes into production with our prepress agency. With any luck, the finished book should be in our hands in early August.
Even though I’ve edited this book several times, reviewed every photograph and examined every finished page, I am continually struck by how amazing this book is. It is – in short – a window into the daily life of a working hand-tool craftsman on the American frontier in the 19th century.
In many ways, this book answers the question a lot of us ask ourselves: What was it like to run a pre-industrial furniture shop? But instead of answering that question with conjecture or breadcrumbs of evidence from probate inventories and price guides for piecework, Klein answers the question with an absolute fire hose of original material that has been under wraps for almost 200 years.
Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847) documented every aspect of his life in daily diaries written in a code he made up. Many of his tools and finished pieces of work have survived. And once his secret code was broken, the diaries and the archaeological evidence could be put together to paint an incredibly detailed portrait of Fisher and his daily life in the shop.
While that’s interesting, Klein didn’t stop there. He examined Fisher’s tools and furniture in remarkable detail to figure out his working methods. Then he put those methods to use in his shop, reproducing several pieces to determine if his theories were correct.
While this book won’t teach you how to cut dovetails or plane boards, it will definitely make you reconsider your own methods and your view of what craftsmanship really is.
In addition to all this, Fisher provides us with a photographic inventory of Fisher’s tools and finished pieces, much like Charles Hummel’s classic “With Hammer in Hand.”
It has taken five years of hard work by people all over the country to put together “Hands Employed Aright,” and I think you will be pleased with both the content and the way we are making this book. Designer Linda Watts took immense care with the layout and was slowed down by the fact that she kept reading and re-reading the book herself.
We will open up pre-publication ordering in the next couple days. “Hands Employed Aright” will be 288 pages, hardbound, in full color and printed on heavy coated paper. The price will be $57, which will include domestic shipping.
Editor’s Note: In addition to making the last edits to the book, we’re working on some final approvals from museums, the index and the cover. We hope to offer pre-publication ordering in August.
Late into the nights and early in the mornings before my class at Port Townsend School of Woodworking last week, I was working through my review of “Hands Employed Aright: The Furniture Making of Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847).” Until now, Fisher’s complete woodworking story has existed only in my mind. Because no furniture researcher has known of Fisher, the way all the tiny pieces and rabbit trails come together has never been put to paper.
I have, of course, several binders jammed with notes and papers and countless documents and images on my computer that contain all the little pieces I’ve gleaned on this journey. But it’s taken me years to put it all together into a coherent narrative. As I’ve made my way through this material, I’ve managed to clench it at the forefront of my memory but this story has been burning in me for years and so I couldn’t wait to see it in its final form.
When Kara sent me the PDF for author review, I was ecstatic. Reading the book in this final presentation (photos and all), it’s almost as if I was experiencing this story for the first time. I cannot express how delighted I am to be working with Lost Art Press on this book because there is no other publisher I would trust with this material. From the very beginning, Chris put his faith in me as a researcher and author, recommending minor editorial changes only for clarity. This freedom allowed me to dive deep in Fisher’s life and to present him in the way I think he deserves to be presented: in his unvarnished brilliance. My goal in this book was to allow Fisher’s life and work to emerge unfiltered.
Even though I’ve known the significance of the survival of his tools, furniture, house, and journal records for a long time now, seeing it all together in the book blew me away all over again. I’ve had the same conversation time after time with furniture researchers – when I tell them Fisher’s story, they all say, “Wait. How come no one has ever heard of this before?” This is a good question. A handful of Fisher biographies have been written but because each book had a different focus, his woodworking activity appears as little more than, “Oh. And he even made his own furniture! How neat!” Yet there in the Jonathan Fisher House and Farnsworth Art Museum archives sat one of the most complete survivals of a pre-industrial cabinet and chairmaker’s story unidentified and undisturbed.
When I was in Port Townsend last week, I spent a few evenings visiting with Jim Tolpin. As I told Jim of Fisher’s story, we discussed how not only is the completeness of the artifacts important, but the fact that it documents a rural craftsman’s work makes it particularly exceptional. Most furniture research focuses on the most successful and prolific master cabinetmakers in the big cities but not just because of a lack of interest in rural work. The tragic reality is that very few rural artisans documented their work and even fewer have two centuries of descendants that carefully preserved their artifacts. Their life’s legacy has long been discarded and their stories are gone forever.
Jonathan Fisher’s story is an incredible exception to this.
Reading through the book, I’m reminded of how spending this time with Fisher has profoundly changed me as a craftsman. Five years ago, when I began crawling under that furniture to read and understand his tool marks, my perspective on the way woodworking can shape our lives began to broaden. In Fisher, I saw a man that knew no boundaries. He made chairs, tables, chests, agricultural items, hats, picture frames, tools, paintings, and even his own wind-powered sawmill and workshop.
There are many questions about Fisher’s woodworking career I was able to resolve but many still remain. The one that nags me the most is, “What was it in Fisher that made him so boundless in his pursuits? What was it that gave him the confidence to pursue activities that were yet outside his skill set?” Throughout his whole life, Fisher continually explored new trades, in most of which he found success. Jonathan Fisher has inspired me to loosen the shackles of specialization that today’s consumer culture tries to bind us with. I do not believe we need experts to hand us pre-packaged products fit for immediate consumption because Fisher exemplifies a compelling alternative. Jonathan Fisher teaches us to boldly explore new craft vistas to build a life with our own two hands.
A couple weeks ago, Mike Updegraff and I had a Mortise & Tenon booth at the Fine Woodworking Live event. During that weekend, attendees asked how long my Jonathan Fisher book project had been under way. Someone said they hadn’t heard much about it and so, when I recently started talking about it, it seemed out of the blue. I used to write about it on my old blog, The Workbench Diary, but because I’ve been buried in work the past couple years, I didn’t have time to blog much about the research.
So here’s a quick history of this project: I began the research in 2013 with a trip to a local house museum (Fisher’s house). The president of the board gave me a tour that highlighted the furniture as it was my main interest. He told me Fisher’s most recent biographer commented that it astonished him no furniture scholar had taken notice of the collection. That confirmed my sense that this was an important and rare story.
Over that winter, I photocopied the transcription of Fisher’s 40 years of journal entries and read every book that gave Fisher a passing mention. I studied the furniture thoroughly but hadn’t been able to see the rest of the tools at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine. I had no idea what was there or even if there was anything significant. After months of research in the house, the board president made some passing comment about how one of Fisher’s descendants was a tool maker in Maine. My ears perked up. “A tool maker? Where in Maine?” “Oh I don’t know. Warren, I think. He’s got a lot of people working for him now, and I understand he’s doing pretty well. Nielsen or something… Lie-Nielsen, I think.”
Go figure. Thomas Lie-Nielsen is a descendant of Jonathan Fisher.
That first email to Tom was surreal. Tom replied he hadn’t been to the house in years and didn’t know much about Fisher’s furniture or tool making. He was intrigued by the findings, though. At the same time, the Lie-Nielsen Open House was coming up and Chris Schwarz and I had discussed visiting the Hulls Cove Tool Barn together. With these plans converging at the same time, we booked a visit to the Farnsworth to see the tools for the first time. I met Tom and his daughter, Kirsten, Chris, Deneb Puchalski, and Julia Kalthoff (from Wetterlings Axes) that morning.
We met for the first time in the waiting area, and as we walked down the hallway to the room where the tools were set out, I had a knot in my stomach. Was I wasting everyone’s time? What if there was only a broken saw or farming tools? I had no idea what to expect.
We walked into the room to see two large conference tables covered in woodworking tools – most of them stamped with Fisher’s name. I was stunned. We walked around the table trying to soak it all in. Most of the museum tags said “Wooden Object” with an accession number. Until the woodworking nerds showed up, no one there knew exactly what they were looking at. We spent about an hour making observations and speculating about anomalies but the whole thing was a surreal blur to me.
The next day, the same crew drove to Blue Hill to meet me at the Fisher house. I gave them the tour and showed them the furniture. After the tour, most of them had to get back to Warren to get ready for the Open House, but Chris and I spent that afternoon together. On our way to the Tool Barn we talked about many things but especially this research. I told him I was hoping to put this into a book someday and asked some advice about the publishing industry. He began to explain the industry but then just came out with, “John and I would like to publish it.” What do you say to something like that? I probably fumbled and said something stupid but I knew at that moment that the project was real. Over the next few days, Chris blogged a few times about his visit and we signed a contract. “How long do you need?” he asked. I told him I needed three full winters.
Thus began the serious research. Because I had wanted to do some research trips, I received two grants to make them happen. The Early American Industries Association and the Society of American Period Furniture Makers each generously awarded me funds for those trips. I went to the Winterthur Museum and spent a week with Charles Hummel (author of “With Hammer in Hand”), a couple days at Old Sturbridge Village, and had several trips back to the Farnsworth to examine the tools. I also had some research done at the Dedham Historical Society.
Then, as I worked on the manuscript during the next couple years, the blogging fell quiet about the topic. There was enough to blog about with M&T, but I was still working on the Fisher book in the background. It wasn’t until this past winter that I was able to block out several months to finish the manuscript. As you may have noticed, during this winter, the research began to resurface.
I am now in the last few hours of working out the changes in my manuscript. I feel relief coming on. This will end up being a four-year project for me. Don Williams told me in the beginning that it would take me somewhere around five years to complete. At the time, I couldn’t fathom it could take that long. But time flies.
Editor’s note: One of the ridiculous and wonderful things we did for Joshua Klein’s book “Hands Employed Aright: The Furniture Production of Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847)” is to commission a painting of Fisher in his workshop. Klein came up with the idea as a way to show Fisher in his habitat, surrounded by many of the tools and objects connected to his life. After reading the first draft of the book, the painting is a delight to explore. In this blog entry, artist Jessica Roux explains how she created the illustration for the book.
As an illustrator, I love tackling exciting projects that combine lots of texture and old world beauty, while offering an opportunity to learn something new. When Joshua Klein contacted me about recreating a workshop scene for his upcoming book on Jonathan Fisher, I knew this project would be just that.
My work is not just drawing a picture; it involves researching, learning and translating articles and stories into compelling visual messages. I’ve worked for a variety of clients, from distilling complex economic concepts for the Sunday Business section of The New York Times to working for Smithsonian magazine on a piece about Abraham Lincoln’s funeral. I love learning new things, so when I’m presented with an opportunity to explore something I’m unfamiliar with, I take on the challenge.
The initial inspiration board Joshua put together for me was compelling. Many of the images had beautiful, rich atmospheres of golden light and warm brown colors (see above). He also provided a rough sketch and lots of reference imagery, including a lot of Fisher’s own tools.
From there, I created a sketch digitally in Photoshop, taking the technical imagery and translating it into my own drawing style. I had some help from my husband, who was kind enough to let me use him for reference in his own shop. He also showed me some of his planes and old tool collections so that I had a better understanding of size, proportion and detail.
After nailing down some more technical aspects of the sketch, we were ready to go to final. I create my finished illustrations by first creating a graphite pencil drawing, then adding color by digitally painting in Photoshop. The graphite drawing allows for a lot of texture to be added, fleshing out the contour sketch into a more realistic, dimensional space. I also really love drawing wood grain, so it was especially fun to work on a piece that incorporated so much of it.
Once the graphite pencil drawing is complete, I scan it in at a high resolution so that it can be reproduced at a larger scale than the drawing itself without loss of quality or detail. Next, I digitally paint the image in Photoshop. I first do a simple color sketch underneath the graphite drawing in order to get a sense of light and to establish the color palette.
Then I block in the colors underneath the drawing and add additional highlights, shadows, details and contrast. I like to move around the illustration going from object to object, getting the details just right, then moving onto the next item. I add adjustment layers when the piece is finished to brighten it up and give a more cohesive feel to the illustration.
I’m pleased with how the final illustration looks – it has a similar feel to the inspirational images, and it ultimately captures a sense of who Jonathan Fisher was and how he worked.
When I sent the first draft of the Jonathan Fisher manuscript to Chris a couple weeks ago, it was an incredible relief. It felt surreal to click “send” on that email after four long years of digging into this man’s life and work. Like every dedicated author, I’ve poured my life into this research and have become so invested in it that everything I do seems to relate back to it. By this point in the project, my wife and children are tiring of the dinner conversations about offset totes, matching dado widths and examining fore plane camber.
But I can’t shut up about it. Fisher is the ultimate case study of pre-industrial craftsmanship and examining his tools, furniture and journal entries in the context of his house has been nothing short of revolutionary to my shop time. It has opened my eyes to the way these artisans were able to make use of a surprisingly small tool kit to accomplish a large variety of forms. I’ve learned from Fisher how to work efficiently with hand tools and how to prioritize my time and energy at the bench. If you already know my writing, this theme will be familiar. In fact, it was the research for this book that was the seed for Mortise & Tenon Magazine.
What I’ve tried to do in this book is present the story of how furniture making fit into Fisher’s early 19th-century frontier life. The thing is, we not only have the tools and furniture to study, but we have access to his most candid moments in his letters and journal entries. We get to see what made him tick – something almost never possible for a pre-industrial artisan. So, even though this book is all about Fisher’s tools and furniture, I’ve decided to weave the context of his life into each chapter. Seeing this context deepens and enriches our understanding of his work.
Jonathan Fisher’s life was far from easy. He dealt with migraine headaches, stomach pains, diarrhea and serious injuries from manual labor on a regular basis. Even in the midst of debilitating physical pain, Fisher carried on with the work at hand. On March 17, 1826, his journal reads, “High N.W. scattering clouds, cold. From 9 A.M. ‘till about 5 P.M. exercised with earache, some of the time severely. Tried first camphor on wool, then hot tobacco smoke, then had several drops of West Indian Rum dropped in. This in the first trial gave a little relief; in the second removed the severity of the pain. At intervals through the day planed out stuff for a common ruler, a pair of parallel rulers and modern dividers, finished the latter. A part of the time walked the room in great pain. It is easy to bear pain when we do not feel it, but when it is acute, then to bear it with patience is something.”
Unlike some other artisans in his day, Fisher viewed his time in his shop as a relief from the pressures of life. Fisher’s son, Josiah, recalled of his father, “All of his amusements (if they could be called such) and all his relaxations from study were of such a nature as to leave him free, in great measure, for those trains of thought which lifted him above the fatigues of earth. He could resort to the artist’s pencil and forget all of his perplexities… or indulge his mechanical taste at his bench or lathe. Thus, with his own hands, he made all the frames, sash, doors and wainscoting of his dwelling.” He found great satisfaction in working with his hands. On one occasion he wrote, “While my hands were occupied in needful labor, I was led to exclaim in heart, hands, what a blessing they are when employed aright.”
Jonathan Fisher was a fascinating artisan. I can’t wait to share this research with you. Because I’ve been focused on finishing the manuscript, I haven’t been able to blog much about it until now. If you’re curious, though, I have been leaking tidbits on Instagram here.
The past couple weeks, I’ve been sorting through thousands of photographs and writing captions. Even though having the photos helped guide the manuscript, I discovered during the writing process that sometimes I still didn’t have the exact shot I needed. Narayan Nayar warned me about this. Fortunately, I still have my camera and my key to the house so capturing what I need is not a problem.
I have just about all the photographs selected and am now finishing up their captions. After that, I’ll polish off Chris’ minor re-write recommendations. Good progress has been made and I expect to hand it off to Chris for his final edit by the end of the month.
