This summer I bought a new book about Vincent Van Gogh and came across a couple of his sketches of carpenters. Like most artists, when Van Gogh wasn’t painting he was sketching and produced many studies of working people. His carpenters could be journeymen on an obligatory Dutch version of wandergesellen or they may be itinerant craftsmen.
I sent the sketches to Chris and his reply was, “I WANT TO KNOW HOW THAT SAW BACKBACK WORKS.” Thinking there was some static on the email line I figured he meant BACKPACK, checked the Van Gogh sketches again and started searching…and searching. I tried several variations of ‘saw backpacks’, ‘saw back racks’ then threw ‘hand’ in front of ‘saw’ and still found nothing.
Getting creative, and thinking about archery, my next try was ‘handsaw quiver’ and then the pain started. I had found the 34 pages of “Handsaw Quiver Varieties and Finite W-Algebras” by Hiraku Nakajima. I read Hiraku’s paper (because it was there), and thanks to having some semi-advanced mathematics under my belt, I only fainted twice. I understood all the in-between words (and, this, multiple, product, vector) and learned a new term, ‘shifted Yanigan’, which may become a new insult the next time someone cuts me off in traffic.
Taking a closer look at Van Gogh’s carpenters and their saws you can see the one on the right has some type of leather strap or belt slung over his shoulder and his saw is attached to the front. He steadies the saw with one hand. The carpenter to the left also has a leather strap over his shoulder. Is it the handle to the bag he carries to the front or the strap to which his saw is attached? If the saw were attached to a leather strap it should hang at an angle, not straight. Has he fashioned a better means of carrying his saw via some type of rack on his back?
Although I didn’t find any 19th century (or earlier) handsaw backpacks or back racks it doesn’t mean they weren’t made and used by individual craftsmen. Who better to design a better method of carrying tools? Maybe there were even some handsaw quivers of the non-W-algebraic kind.
By Paulo Vincenzo Bonomini in La Chiesa di Santa Grata, Bergamo, Italy
With Halloween just days away you can be sure Chris and John are dusting off the handmade (and form-fitting) coffins they made last year. If you are contemplating making your own coffin keep in mind to include at least some small percentage for future expansion (yours, not the coffin’s) in your measurements. Nobody wants to be shoehorned into their coffin.
Loose translation: “You made it, let’s see if you fit in it.”
If you are carving pumpkins and having any difficulties I recommend switching to a keyhole saw. Several years ago I had the task of carving five pumpkins, two for my parents and three for neighbors. As I was struggling with several different knives on one Matisse-inspired carving my father handed me a keyhole saw and I joined the Keyhole Saw School of Pumpkin Carving. In the early evening of that same day my father called his buddies to join us in the neighborhood cemetery for the “lighting of the pumpkins”. There we were in the crisp October evening under the branches of a huge oak tree admiring our pumpkins when a cop walked up and told us we would have to disperse. Apparently, someone driving by reported a “satanic cult ceremony” taking place in the cemetery. My father and his cronies thought this was hilarious. We grabbed our pumpkins and dispersed.
Besides pumpkins and coffins (optional) let’s not forget the traditional witches, cats and bats. You will find some fine 15th and 16th century misericords and a haunted trade guild hall in the small gallery below.
–Suzanne (Scaredy-cat) Ellison
P.S. If you enjoy ghost stories look up the hauntings at Carpenter’s Hall in Philadelphia or go to the Haunted Ohio Books website to read about The Strange Carpenter.
Great Malvern Priory, England
Oude Kerk, Amsterdam
Dunblane Cathedral, Scotland
Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, built in 1773, haunted since 1879.
At the end of August we learned about the auction of the manuscript of John Widdifield (1673-1720) an early joiner in Philadelphia. The manuscript includes measurements and prices for furniture, sketches for a spice box (above), a writing desk and a chest-on frame. There are also instructions for sharpening tools and recipes and tips for staining and varnishing. Some of Widdifield’s descendants added to the manuscripts.
The sales estimate for the September 17 auction was $15,000-$25,000 and after very brisk bidding sold for $75,000, including the buyer’s premium. The Philadelphia Museum of Art and Winterthur Museum partnered in bidding in an effort to keep the manuscript in the Philadelphia area, but they were outbid by a private collector.
The good news: Widdifield’s manucript will be published in the Chipstone Foundation journal AmericanFurniture and will also be posted online. Chipstone will work with the digital content group at the University of Wisconsin in Madison to put the entire manuscript online, searchable by keyword and available to researchers at no cost.
As Chris has written several times in this blog these kinds of manuscripts are rare. It is even rarer to have this type of document published in a relatively short period of time after acquisition.
So, a great big thank you to the private collector who chose to share this important document. I could kiss you!
As Part II ended Allen Gawthrop’s business had grown and he was in desparate need of a larger shop and housing for himself and his workmen. At this point he was all of 23 years old.
MARRIAGE AND HOME MAKING
By this time I not only wanted more shop room, and boarding for the workmen, but I had occasionally been visiting a young woman for whom an attachment of something more than common friendship seemed to exist, and I hoped to some day to become worthy of her undivided affection and esteem. After looking around the country for some time, I found a small lot of about five acres, not over half a mile off, on which was a small log cabin, and adjoining which was about eight or ten acres more of wood lots, all of which I found could be bought at a reasonable price: but how I was to get the necessary buildings erected, that was the question. I had no way of boarding the workmen and it seemed board could not be had in the neighborhood so the only alternative seemed to be to move into the old house temporarily until we could build a larger one. But here a new difficulty presented itself, for to expect the young lady before mentioned to leave a large comfortable home and move with me into such a cabin was rather too much. However I summoned up sufficient courage to lay my troubles before her– she evinced interest in the matter and on my giving her a description of the house and its surroundings, I found that she would rather go with me into a small house that we could call our own than to go with another family. . . I purchased the property and began preparation for building a shop. One day I accidentally discovered traces of an old dam and race where water of a small stream had been taken around and into my lot for irrigating the meadow, and I saw that by purchasing two or three acres more land of my neighbor I could have a nice little water power to utilize in our business–so I went right away to my neighbor and found him willing to sell me as much land as would give me the power together with the water right at the same price per acre that I had paid him for the other five acres I had purchased of him. This would make me a lot altogether of about sixteen acres of land with a water power on it just what I had been looking for so long. Instead of putting up a shop as intended a few days before (near the house) we dug tail race, built a shop, fixed up the dam, got some 20 feet head and put in a 16 feet overshot wheel which gave ample power for lathes, saws &c. We made good use of for nearly twenty years afterwards. . .
On the 31st day of the seventh month 1833 I entered the marriage life with Mary Ann Newlin. . . Of New Garden Township. . .on the 22 day of the eighth month following we moved into the little log cabin in which we lived four years. Although the house was small and we had a pretty large family of apprentice boys and journeymen yet we made out to live quite comfortably and in just four to a day from the time we moved into the old house, we had a new one built and moved into it and were much more able to appreciate its comfort and conveniences than if we had never lived in the old one.
With ample shop room and water power business increased and soon the great trouble was to fill the orders. . .
Gawthrop’s ad from 1846.
Our business seemed to take a change; although we continued the furniture business yet the greater portion of my time was occupied in making and putting in rams…we built a foundry to make our own iron and brass casting (in 1847) we concluded to move to Wilmington and go into the plumbing and gas fitting busines. . . and moved on the 9th of 3rd month 1854. . .
19th c. water ram.
Addenda by Gawthrop’s son Henry: Thenarratativeof my father’s life shows that he was strong in the imaginative. He was a skilled and skillful worker in wood, a hint of which is given in the desk made by him late in life, at which I am writing. He established a successful cabinet business and then following the needs of the time he changed to a metal worker. . . the narrative of his life was written in 1880 in his 70th year. He died 6th mo. 23rd 1885 and is buried at the Wilmington and Brandywine Cemetery.
That concludes the autobiography of Allen Gawthrop. In a page from a 20th century family geneology I found this little note:
Chest by Allen Gawthrop, maple and cherry with mahogany trim.
Allen Gawthrop wrote his autobiography when he was 70 years old and divided his story into three parts. At the end of Part I he was 21 years old and had finished his four-year apprenticeship with cabinetmaker Ziba Moore.
CABINET BUSINESS
I worked journey-work for a while at the old shop, made a clock case for my father and did some other little jobs. Then in the fall I went to Baltimore and spent the winter at my trade and boarded with my aunt Elizabeth Taylor. In the Spring following I received a letter from my brother Daniel saying that my father was anxious that I should return home, that Robert Good, who was then carrying on the Cabinet business in Penn Township, said he would like to sell out his stock and quit the business. My father thought it would be a good chance for me and wished me to come home and see about it. I therefore packed up my tools and some materials I had selected and took the steam boat for Port Deposit, where my brother Daniel met me and took me home.
After a few days I went to see Robert Good. I found he had a small stock of materials on hand and had been doing a small country business and had an apprentice who had been at the business something over a year: and had a few jobs engaged. He said he would rent me the shop, board myself and the boy, sell me the small stock he had at cost and throw in the good will–So I took him at his offer. We made an inventory of the stock on hand and commenced business, not however without doubts as to getting enough work to keep myself and apprentice both busy.
In a few days we found that we needed many small articles such as varnish, locks, screws, springs, glue &c to complete some jobs on hand, and not having any capital of my own, I saw I must look for help from some source–As my father seemed to encourage my starting in business, I naturally concluded that he would give me the needful assistance. So I borrowed R.G.’s horse and wagon and started one morning for Wilmington intending to call on my father. I found him at home and with some misgivings I introduced my business, told him the prospects seemed fair, that our stock needed replenishing, that I had no means of my own, and that I was under the necessity of asking him to assist me. After a little while he arose, went to his desk and got a ten dollar note and handed it to me. At first I hesitated about taking it and told him I had but five dollars and that fifteen dollars would be very little to get the number of articles we needed; but I knew there was no use in arguing the matter, but as before, with the clothes, he wanted me to shift for myself.
Now I look upon this as one of the most important turning points in my life. It was not over one hundred yards from the house down to the road and I had a very short time to make up my mind whether to turn to the left and go on to Wilmington and do the best I could with the fifteen dollars or turn to the right and go back home and give up the business and start out into the world as a journeyman cabinet maker and live as I found I could independent of my father or any one else. But as good fortune would have it I turned to the left and went on to town, procured only such materials as I would need to finish some jobs I had on hand, and got no more than I had money to pay for. . . I never yet have had cause to regret the turn I made that morning “to the left.”
I do not wish to be understood as thinking hard of my father for the course he pursued. I have reason to think he loved his children as much as most parents do, and that he desired my prosperity in every way, but his object evidently was to give me a lesson in economy and prevent me from branching out beyond my means, as too many do to their own injury and loss by others. It became necessary that I should have a horse, and my father very generously offered to furnish me with money to buy one. I probably shall never know the influence these cautionary lessons had on my after life, but I do know that I have always acted with caution and have been careful never to go in debt beyond my means to pay; and although I have never at any time made money very fast, yet I have always found, at the end of each year, my circumstances gradually getting easier.
Within a year I found it necessary to increase our force of workmen. Our shop soon became insufficient and there was a chance for boarding only in R. Good’s family for the hands and as it did not suit them very well to take more boarders, I began to see the necessity of making a change, so one day in conversation with R. Good he in half earnest proposed for me to buy him out and then I could enlarge the shop. I asked him what he would take for the farm. After a little consideration he named a price and on consultation with my father and brother they both advised me to take him up at his offer, which I did the next day. He wanted a few days to consider the matter and the next week there was a public sale of a farm in London Grove township which he attended and finding it sold for so much more than he expected, he flew from his offer and so all my hopes for a time were frustrated.
Coming up in the third and last part. . .love is in the air.
