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Category: Honest Labour

‘Honest Labour’ – the Column that Named the Book

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Editor’s note: For the next several weeks, we will feature some of our favorite columns from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward” years, along with a few sentences about why these particular columns hit the mark.

This column from 1937 is one of my personal favorites because of the poem:

“Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labour bears a lovely face;”

Try saying it out loud as you work (be sure no one is watching) and you can feel the rhythm of mortising or sawing flow through the syllables. Aside from that, I am deeply aligned with Hayward’s admonition that we should commit ourselves completely to something. That is what was missing from my life when I was a young journalist. For me, writing has always been important, but it doesn’t have the dizzying depth of woodworking, which involves all the senses. Hand skill. Memory. Geometry. Once I committed to woodworking, my path became clear. Or, as Hayward put it: “For we have to take in all we can and give out all we can, if we are to make a success of anything.”

Top that, Master Yoda.

— Christopher Schwarz

Honest Labour

Honest labour bears a lovely face

From time to time we come across men in their middle or old age whose faces show the stamp of an experience which has bred in them much wisdom and kindliness, setting them apart somehow from the ordinary run of men. We enjoy talking to them; their company is stimulating even when they are not very ready of speech. There is something so real and sincere about them, and their opinions are so well founded. We find them among farm workers, fishermen, cabinetmakers, cobblers, among workers of all trades just as much as among professional men, and always they have the one thing in common—hardworking lives. One of the sweetest singers among the Elizabethan poets wrote:

“Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labour bears a lovely face;”

Which perhaps puts its finger on their secret. And it is good, just now when holidays are over, to reflect a little on this matter of work.

***

Most of us have to work in order to live and, like sensible men, make the best of it. But it is only when we come across the man whom work has, as it were, seasoned like a piece of fine old wood that we begin to suspect that work may have more purpose in our lives than we give it credit for. Just as a man brings his own powers of hand and mind to bear upon the work he is doing, so does that work in turn influence him. It sets its mark upon him, in some cases even producing distinct, recognisable types—shepherd, stable boy, lawyer, doctor, we know how each can carry in face and bearing some reflection of his daily activities—but, whatever the work, it helps to mould the man. The more it demands of him, mentally or physically, the more it can do for him, toughening his fibre, strengthening his will, bringing out qualities which otherwise might have lain dormant all his life, fine qualities some of them, even rare qualities. Work can also twist and warp a man: it all depends, I think, upon our attitude towards it.

***

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There are business men who optimistically placard their offices with such texts as: “There’s no fun like work,” but I would like to know how many of us believe them. Work is not fun. To call it fun is just one of those silly, superficial sayings which glance at a truth and then sheer away again. Work has its glorious moments, moments when we are working at the top of our form and thoroughly enjoying ourselves, but it also has its inevitable drudgery; the steady doing from day to day of a certain job, whether we like it or not, sometimes in the teeth of difficulty, sometimes in spite of our own inclination of the moment, simply doing it because it has to be done, as one of the necessities of existence. Herein lies its value, bracing us up in mind and body, bringing out qualities of patience and steadfastness which otherwise might be lacking. But we have tacitly to accept it and make an honest job of work if we are to reap the real good, the essential good, which is greater really than the weekly pay envelope.

***

Thomas Dekker, he wrote that “Honest labour bears a lovely face” knew what he was talking about, for he worked hard in order to live and was famous among his fellow poets and playwrights for his “right happy and copious industry.” The fact of the matter is that we are mainly unknown quantities, even to ourselves. We can only guess at our own powers. The full range and extent of them we simply do not know till ambition or necessity, through hard work, force us to develop them. Our minds and our wills are the very queerest things and need all the urge and all the stiffening they can get from the hard, unsentimental facts of existence before they will begin to show of what they are capable. Work brings a man to maturity, jostling him up against his fellow men in competition, sharpening his wits, developing his skill, whether in the handling of men or affairs or the handling of a tool, at the very least into the regular habit of industry. Work is not really the enemy which, when we are in holiday mood or suffering from illness or fatigue, it may sometimes appear. It is another of the instruments of our education to life, and often the sterner it is the more it brings out the worth of a man.

***

That is why men, who cannot from the nature of their work employ their energies as actively as they wish, are wise when they use part of their leisure in the work of their choice. We call it a hobby then, but many a man who has drifted casually into a hobby has found in it a lifework. In this, at least, he is his own master, and he may become a master in the highest sense, of a craft, of a science, or an art, if he gives himself wholeheartedly to it. That is the difficulty with most of us: we don’t give ourselves out enough. We are always holding back, making excuses when we come to the difficult bits for not being quite as thorough as we should. There is always a technique to be learnt, and pains and patience are needed to master it. Every step of the way cannot be equally interesting. When mankind tried to eliminate drudgery it invented machines, and brought boredom into the lives of the millions of men who have to do the little routine jobs in attendance on them while the machines do the real work. And boredom is worse by a long way, for it simply stifles us. Drudgery as a means to an end, and that the perfecting of a job, has to have its place, but if we really set our hearts on success we shall not grudge one moment of it.

***

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So to all those of our readers who, as amateurs, are planning to carry on with their woodwork this winter, we would say: see that every job is as good and as thorough as you can make it from start to finish. Don’t stint your pains and don’t miss any opportunity, through careful study of our pages and by any other means within your power, of learning all you can about the elements of woodwork as well as about advanced processes. Any miscellaneous knowledge about timber, tools, furniture, whatever it is, that you gather by the way, will never come amiss. For we have to take in all we can and give out all we can, if we are to make a success of anything. And that applies to things far greater than woodwork; even to life itself, I think.

‘Honest Labour’ Now Available for Pre-publication Ordering

Posted on by Lost Art Press

HL-cover-mockupAfter four years of honest labor, I am happy to announce you can place a pre-publication order for our newest book: “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years, 1936-1966.” This massive book (474 pages) compiles Hayward’s best columns about the craft during his tenure as editor of The Woodworker magazine in the United Kingdom.

The book is $34 and can be ordered here from our store.

Hayward’s columns cover an enormous swath of woodworking philosophy, from discussions of our insecurities about our skills to the regenerative power of time at the bench. Hayward writes from a unique perspective: He was a traditionally trained woodworker, World War I veteran, professional woodworker, draughtsman, photographer, writer and editor. He steered The Woodworker through World War II (without missing an issue) and was a comforting voice for woodworkers through the most tumultuous portion of the 20th century.

We’ve taken his best columns during the 30 years he was the editor and reprinted them in “Honest Labour” for you to enjoy and think about. Each column occupies a single spread in the book – just open the book to any page and you will find a complete column. And each is illustrated with drawings from that particular year of The Woodworker – many of the drawings from Hayward’s own hand.

“Honest Labour” is the fifth and final book in The Woodworker series, which was a multi-year, multinational project to preserve the hand tool knowledge that almost disappeared in the 20th century. “Honest Labour” is the same trim size as the other Woodworker books in the series, printed on the same paper and features the same tough binding. The only difference is the cotton cover cloth. We chose a deep scarlet instead of the green to differentiate this volume from the others.

The book is currently at the printer and should ship in early May 2020. We hope our retailers will carry this book, though we have no control (obviously) over their stock choices.

In the coming weeks we’ll publish an excerpt for those of you who are on the fence or unsure this book is worth your time and effort.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. I know we have been releasing a slew of stuff this week – pinch rods, linocut prints from “Good Work” and now this book. It was completely unplanned and is what happens when you run a publishing company with the “it’s done when it’s done philosophy.” Sometimes that means you have nothing. Sometimes it means you have too much.

Black-out Nights

Posted on by Kara Uhl

Editor’s note: September 1, 1939, two days before the declaration of war, Britain imposed mandatory nightly black-outs to prevent enemy aircraft from identifying targets. The black-outs resulted in many people spending long, quiet hours at home once darkness fell.

Years ago I knew an old schoolmaster who, after his retirement, had made a hobby of landscape painting. All through the summer months, and on any mild winter’s day, you would meet him stepping out briskly with his folding easel, sketching stool, paints and canvas—a lean, dapper, grey-bearded man, with weather-beaten face and twinkling eyes. A man who enjoyed talking to any man, woman, or child he met, who had his own cheery philosophy of life and sent every one away smiling from the encounter. A man who in the evening of his days was leading a contentedly full, happy life.

***

Even then I did not realise, till after his death, all that he had gained from it. It happened that I was invited to his house to choose one of his pictures as a souvenir. I was one of the merest of acquaintances, just one of the many who used to enjoy a gossip with him by the way, and I had never entered his house during his lifetime. I remember gazing about me in astonishment at the overwhelming evidence of his industry. Not only were the walls of every room completely covered with pic­tures, but there were stacks of them in a lumber room as well. And, looking at them, one realised that not one moment spent upon them had been wasted. They were not great art. They would never make him famous. Probably by this time, except in the houses of those who loved him, they have become real lumber and have long ago been destroyed. But in them he had captured the sunlight shining on the buttercup fields, lighting up old red roofs, glinting on the surface of a running stream and on the grey-green of overhanging willows. He had caught the sky in all its moods, dappled with drifting cumuli clouds or dark with storm. And he had looked at it all with the eyes of understanding and painted the best he knew. Gazing at those pictures, you felt how he had enjoyed painting them. They had taken him into another world, shown him the beauty that lies hidden in simple, everyday things. No wonder he was a very happy man.

***

All this comes back to me now in reflecting how much more in the months—perhaps even in the years—to come, we are going to be thrown back upon our own resources for the filling of our leisure time. There will not be the same facilities for pursuing our pleasures away from home, still less an inducement to do so during the long black-out evenings. But if we can really concentrate upon some hobby or occupation that will keep hands and minds employed we shall not lose by the change. The man already having a fair proficiency in woodwork who sets himself to become a skilled crafts­man, the novice who determines to remain a novice no longer, by so doing enter into a new world, one in which they are discovering the possibilities of their own powers, establishing new standards of self-reliance. And one never knows where discoveries of this kind will end. …

***

… So that we have to set to work to make our plans for the black-out evenings—plans that will not allow us time for brooding over-much over what the future may bring, because that is futile and weakening. “Don’t cross your bridges before you come to them” is excellent advice. Our imagination is so apt to run riot, to show the bridges breaking down under our feet, without revealing the other side of the picture—that there is always some way of getting across. Let us therefore keep these troubled minds of ours fully occupied over a good practical job and worries and anxieties will assume reasonable proportions: In times like these we cannot hope—or even wish—to escape them altogether. To do so would be to stand altogether aloof from the common danger and the common purpose. But we can learn to cope with them like men.

— Charles Hayward, The Woodworker magazine, 1939

The Tragedy of Starved Genius

Posted on by Kara Uhl
Thomas Sheraton (British, Stockton-on-Tees 1751–1806 London), Thomas Bensley (London), 1793–94, London, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NK2229 .S54 1793

Editor’s note: This article, by Charles Hayward, appeared in the June 1951 issue of The Woodworker magazine, and will be included in “Honest Labour,” which will be available this year. This essay is a bit different from Hayward’s Chips from the Chisel columns, but Thomas Sheraton’s story is fascinating (and a bit tragic, as Hayward notes in the title of his piece). This article also highlights Hayward’s vast knowledge of the history of furniture making and its makers, as well as his dedication to research.

1951 is the bicentenary of the birth of Sheraton, and it is interesting to recall what little we know of the man whose name has become so associated with one of our great furniture styles

It is a strange coincidence, with regard to the three greatest English cabinet makers of the eighteenth century, that no portrait of any of them, not even a rough pencil sketch, is known to exist. Thus, any enterprising film producer contemplating a presentation of one of these matters must rely solely upon his imagination –– no difficulty where Hollywood is concerned.

No name in the furniture world occurs more frequently than that of Thomas Sheraton. What manner of man was this gifted individual? Indisputably an artist, we should say, perhaps even a poet. Who else could have conceived those “elegant appurtances” of a lady’s boudoir, those dainty little cabinets and dressing tables, with their slender tapering legs, their festoons and painted medallions, their rich satinwood veneers mellowing with time to old gold like beech leaves in autumn?

Sheraton furniture forms the ideal setting for fluttering fans, brocaded hoops, powdered ringlets, diamond shoe-buckles. Its designer is the Chopin of the cabinet-making craft, with, maybe, something about him of the Chopin of the keyboard — pale, fragile, dreamy, romantic.

Alas! Such a picture is far from the truth. Woefully far! Sheraton was born at Stockton-on-Tees, of poor parents, in 1751. So that this year is the bicentenary of his coming into the world. How amazed so obscure an individual would have been at the mention of a bicentenary!

Early days. — He was apprenticed to a cabinet maker, and contrived somehow or other to pick up a knowledge of drawing and geometry and a small store of classical learning. Since he himself tells us that he never at any time received a collegiate or academic training he must have taught himself these things.

Somewhere in his thirties Sheraton arrived in London and attempted to establish himself in Soho. His trade card, issued from Wardour Street, is still preserved. It informs the public that Thomas Sheraton “teaches perspective, architecture and ornaments, makes designs for cabinet makers, and sells all kinds of drawing books.”

The only way for a designer of furniture to become known in those days was to publish a manual of design. So that shortly after the northerner’s arrival in London there appeared “The Cabinet Maker and Upholsterer’s Drawing Book,” by Thomas Sheraton. The publication attracted some attention by reason of its novelty of treatment and expert draughtsmanship, but competition was heavy.

The 18th century books. — If our Georgian forefarthers failed to equip their homes in “the most elegant and approved fashion” it was not for lack of instruction. Never was such a spate of manuals and guides let loose on a suffering public. From Chippendale and Shearer down to plain George Smith’s “Household Furniture” they came tumbling one over another, one relentless everlasting flood.

All these publications had certain features in common; they began with long-winded, stilted prefaces which make amusing reading to-day. The authors did not scruple to condemn as utterly old-fashioned the designs of their rivals even though such designs might be no more than a year old.

As there was no copyright law, no man hesitated to “lift” the design of another and incorporate it in his own publication. So that Mr. So-and-So’s “New Guide” might be new in so far as it consisted of one-fifth of his own inventions and four-fifths of other people’s.

These manuals were circulated among provincial and country cabinet makers who could not afford the time or expense to make a journey to town to replenish their stocks. It was here that poor Sheraton started at a disadvantage with men such as Chippendale and Hepplewhite, who were the heads of established firms, able to receive and execute orders.

There was no firm of Sheraton. He may conceivably have received orders which were put out for others to complete, but in all likelihood he received none, and more astute and business-like rivals profited by his designs.

A curious mixture. — There was another reason which tended to his impoverishment. His work did not stand first with him. This may sound strange in the case of one who is now universally admitted to be a genius. Nevertheless, Sheraton’s real bent was towards religion. He was a Baptist minister, and a rabid minister at that.

Instead of making contacts which would have enabled him to build up a business he spent countless hours on the composition of verbose inflated religious treatises which nobody read, or in delivering sermons to which only a few listened.

Sheraton’s religious tolerance, however, did not extend to his business rivals. Like most frustrated characters he was prone to condemn all and sundry. The designs of his predecessor, Chippendale, he dismissed as “wholly antiquated and laid aside.” Those of Hepplewhite were “erroneous in perspective, already in decline, and likely to die in disorder.”

Finally, of Manwaring’s “Cabinet Makers Real Friend,” an excellent manual, which had achieved a considerable circulation, our generous critic declared that there was nothing in it that “an apprentice boy might not be taught in seven hours.” The tit-bit, however, occurs in his own preface where the aggrieved Mr. Sheraton denounces “the ill-nature of those who hate to speak well of any but their own productions.”

Sheraton’s last refuge in London was in Broad Street, Golden Square, where he kept a squalid little bookshop, taught drawing, sold stationery, and wrote and published his books, including those voluminous religious dissertations which now lie in obscurity in the British Museum. His last mad project was an Encyclopedia which it was intended to issue in 125 numbers, only 30 of which he lived to complete.

A pen portrait. — It was in connection with this publication that Adam Black, the Scottish publisher, then a young man in London, called on Sheraton in the hope of finding employment. Black’s unforgettable picture of the man and his surroundings has so often been quoted that one may be excused from repeating it at length.

“He lived in an obscure street,” says Black, “his house half shop, half dwelling-house, and looked like a worn out Methodist minister with threadbare coat.” The writer goes on to say how one afternoon he took tea with the Sheraton family, and found that there were but wo cups and saucers in the house. Mrs. Sheraton drank out of the child’s porringer.

Black stayed with them for a week, writing articles and putting the shop in order, for which he received half a guinea. “Miserable as the pay was,” he adds, “I was half ashamed to take it from the poor man.” It was the old story of Jack-of-all-Trades, as Black’s closing words show. “Sheraton’s abilities and resources are his ruin,” he asserts. “In attempting to do everything he does nothing.”

The end. — Sheraton died in 1806 in his fifty-fifth year, leaving a destitute family behind him. The man who had designed some of the most beautiful and graceful chairs in English domestic furniture gave utterance to these pathetic words: “I can be well content to sit in a wooden bottom chair myself, provided I can but have common food and raiment wherewith to pass through life in peace.”

— Charles Hayward, The Woodworker magazine, June 1951

Coming Soon: ‘Honest Labour’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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This week, we are finishing the layout of our latest book, “Honest Labour,” which is a collection of essays from The Woodworker magazine while Charles H. Hayward was editor (1939-1967). This book will be the fifth and final volume in our series from The Woodworker.

When we started on The Woodworker project more than a decade ago we didn’t intend to publish “Honest Labour.” The series was going to have four books that covered handwork: tools, techniques, joinery, the workshop and furniture plans. But as we paged through every article from The Woodworker during the 29-year period, we kept getting stuck on the “Chips From the Chisel” column at the beginning of every issue.

These columns during the Hayward years are like nothing I’ve ever read in a woodworking magazine. They are filled with poetry, historical characters and observations on nature. And yet they all speak to our work at the bench, providing us a place and a reason to exist in modern society.

For years I heard rumors that the unsigned column was written by a clerk or assistant at the magazine, but I don’t believe that for a second. After reading Hayward’s writing on woodworking most of my career, I know his prose like I know my own.

For the last few years, we’ve been working on “Honest Labour” in the background. John Hoffman secured the rights to the material, which was no small effort or expense. Kara Gebhart worked through all of the “Chips From the Chisel” columns, selecting the best ones. We decided to organize the essays year by year, and so Kara has written a short column for every chapter that lists the major news events of that year. These short essays provide important context – even woodworking writing is different in wartime.

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During the last couple months, Megan Fitzpatrick and I have been laying out the book, with Megan doing most of the heavy lifting. The structure of the book is more like a book of favorite poems you can pick up while you are waiting for your family to get ready for dinner. Or when you sit down in front of the fire after a long day of work.

Every page spread in the book consists of one column only, illustrated with line drawings from the magazine that were published during the same year the column was written. The illustrations were also made by Hayward.

Here’s a small sample of one of the columns from the 1960s. Like a lot of good writing, it’s difficult to divorce a piece from the whole without diminishing it.

How easy for anyone having sufficient professional skill to get away with a semblance of truth. There are some craftsmen who simply take it for granted. The lack of precision in marking up, the careless cut, the small faults which declare themselves when a piece is assembled. Such a craftsman knows all the answers. “Oh I can soon put that right,” he says easily. And he can, filing, adjusting, smoothing, gluing here, screwing there, using as much casual skill in faking as in making. The furniture he produces may deceive the untrained eye but by any true standard it falls short. Without perhaps even being aware of it, the casual craftsman lets himself down more than anyone: the real damage is to himself.

It is all too easy, demanding no particular effort, no particular sense of responsibility, either to himself or to anyone else. But anyone who wishes to lift himself out of the rut, as a person as well as a craftsman, needs to feel responsibility and to be committed to a standard. Only in this way can he keep the sense of effort alive, and to cease from effort is to die before our time.

“Honest Labour” is going to be a sizable book – 488 pages – the largest book in The Woodworker series, and will have the same manufacturing specs as the other books in the series so they look good on your shelf. We hope to deliver it to the printer by the end of the month for a release in April or May 2020.

We know this is an odd woodworking book and that a lot of people will be skeptical, so we are doing everything we can to keep the price as reasonable as possible. And we are prepared for it to be a commercial flop. That’s OK, as we consider it an honest labor of love.

— Christopher Schwarz