A woodworking friend of mine has the most boring tattoo ever.
It’s a single black dot – about 1/16″ across – on his hand. He put it there as a reminder. Whenever he sees that dot, he is reminded to stop messing around and get back to studying or working or some such.
This morning, I’m pondering a trip to the tattoo parlor myself. I need some totem to remind me to lay down my tools when someone is yakking at me.
This week I am in the heat of finishing a run of Roorkee chairs, and I’m down to the part where I am cutting and assembling all the leather bits. This involves hundreds (maybe a thousand) intense freehand cuts with a utility knife and punches. One miscut and the piece is spoiled.
For the last three days, I’ve been standing alone at my bench making these cuts. I have neat piles of hundreds of components. Zero mistakes.
Yesterday a neighbor came into the shop, asking me to make him a walking stick (he’s been using a tomato stake to help him get around lately).
First mistake: I kept working while we chatted.
Second mistake: I should have offered to simply buy him a walking stick at the drugstore a block away.
Third mistake: I installed a buckle on upside-down, and I had to then destroy and remake the piece.
Fourth mistake: I fixed the problem while he kept talking. My repair turned out to be half-assed.
Fifth mistake: I cut the belting for a chair’s thigh strap 1-1/2” too short, completely ruining an assembled $150 component.
I put down my tools and wished the neighbor a happy new year as he left, tomato stake in hand.
I know a tattoo can’t fix stupid. But you think I’d be smarter after working in group workshops for the last 23 years.
One of the reasons we’ve made Lost Art Press books as durable as possible might seem silly. Perhaps it is the result of growing up in the Cold War, but I’ve always worried that human civilization is on the brink of collapse.
And after that happens – whether it’s from war, climate or economics – people will need to build things without the help of YouTube or television. Maybe our books (which have already endured floods, babies and dog attacks), will survive as well.
Lately, however, my morning walks into Cincinnati have changed my mind.
Just about every morning I walk along a stretch of the Ohio River that features a geologic timeline of earth’s history from 450 million years ago until the settlement of Cincinnati in 1788. Each tile in the path is about 36” x 36” and can be covered in a single stride. And each tile represents 1 million years. Some of the tiles are decorated with the animals that developed during this period (227 million years ago: The first mammals are 6 in. shrew-like animals) or what was happening with the climate or the continents.
The entirety of human history is covered in the last of the 450-plus tiles. It’s a sobering thought to consider our lives and our work against such a grand clock. Even if you build things from solid stone, they are no match for time on this scale. Building a chair with excellent joinery so it might last 200 years suddenly seems laughable. In 1 million years, everything we know will all be dust anyway.
If this sounds like I’m headed down a path to existential despair, you’re wrong.
On the whole, I consider humanity to be a generally greedy, selfish and destructive force. But we are all capable of good. For me, the two most important things I can do are: Take care of others and create things that are beautiful. By “beauty,” I don’t mean the stuff in art museums, the books in our libraries or the soaring buildings in our cities. I mean the small (and big) things that we do everyday.
Beauty can be a rude chair that is nice to sit in and draws your eye from the other side of the room. It can be a handplaned surface. A moulding that creates bands of light and dark. A song that is sung at the end of a day’s work. A meal that you make for your family.
All these things are temporary; some last only an instant. But these bits of immediate and ordinary beauty (what you see, taste, smell and feel) make a moment – perhaps the one you are in right now – better than moments without them.
This beauty does not require a particular talent or decades of training to create. This is one of the reasons I’ve always been drawn to vernacular furniture and architecture, outsider art, folk music, folk cooking. Anyone can do it. Anyone. Even if I’m making a chair from Curtis Buchanan’s pen, singing a song by Ralph Stanley or making a recipe from the Lee Brothers, the act of creating it (or creating it again) is what keeps me in love with life.
If you are a cynic, you might think this blog entry is my way of explaining that we are going to stop sewing the signatures of our books. Or quit using the fiber tape that reinforces the casebinding. Or heck, we’re just gonna have monkeys read our books out loud on YouTube. After all, it’s all going to be dust as soon as the earth steps forward onto the next tile.
But no. I think that making something well – even if it lasts just an instant on the geologic timeline – is a form of beauty and brings pleasure or delight to others (as it does to me).
Gotta go. I’ve got some leather scraps that need to be riveted together into something that – I hope – will bring joy to a man in California and a man in Idaho.
Surrounding the workshop of Wyatt Childs Inc., the acreage is stacked with antique stonework, ironwork and enormous millstones and grindstones. It’s literally a garden of earthly delights, and I spent as much time as I could wandering in the yard during the French Oak Roubo Project.
But I missed something, and it took Will Myers to set me straight. After we cut off work on Tuesday night, our clothes shot through with French oak, Will guided me to a huge chunk of rock I’d missed before.
It was the stone architectural ornament shown above. In the center is a skep that is flanked by scales (not sure what is on the scales; they don’t look like coins). Below is written: Industry Labor & Wait.
Bo Childs said the ornament came from an English bank building where it was above the door. The “& Wait” part is what deposit holders are supposed to do when they save their money. I was a bit confused by the American spelling of “labor” on an English bank building, but it’s a big world with a lot of odd spellings.
Will turned to me and said: “You have to have it.”
The piece is massive – it weighs 2,600 pounds. My head spun when thinking about how to move that into the storefront’s biergarten 500 miles away. Apparently I was so dizzy that I asked Bo how much he wanted for his pretty rock.
Bo said: “You have to have it.” And he quoted me a price that I couldn’t say no to.
Getting the rock to my door in Covington is easy via LTL and a liftgate. But the last 20 feet are going to be a creative and careful endeavor. I don’t want my obituary to say I was crushed by a symbol of capitalism.
In our competitive society, the winners get to name the things. This is true with battles, large social movements and even furniture styles.
I think there is value in trying to think of these issues from the perspective of others – the losers, if you will. When growing up in Arkansas, some teachers taught us about the Civil War. Others taught us about the War of Northern Aggression.
If you think divergent taxonomy couldn’t apply to furniture, I disagree. About 15 years ago I worked with a guy who studied Kentucky Style furniture. When I suggested that the pieces looked like Western Shaker furniture with some simple inlay, he became testy.
“The Shakers,” he said, “were a weird religious cult and shouldn’t be remembered or celebrated. It’s cult furniture.”
Ouch. But it made me think.
So while on a walk this morning I devised alternative names for popular historical furniture styles. I know that some sensitive readers will think this list is political. It’s not. Trying to see things from another person’s perspective is an intellectually honest way of examining your own beliefs.
See if you can recognize your favorite furniture style in this list:
Colonizer Furniture
Fundamentalist Furniture
Mall Stall Furniture
Zealot Furniture
Farmer Furniture
Industrialist furniture
Hopeless Idealist Furniture
Slave Owner Furniture
Poverty Furniture
Royal Excess Furniture
Marketing Department Furniture
Historical Revisionist Furniture
War Furniture
Table Saw Furniture
Patronage Furniture
Desperation Furniture
Social Climber Furniture
Price Point Furniture
These are probably not good book titles. (Though I’d buy the books. Peter Follansbee said this about my library: “It looks like you buy any book with the word ‘furniture’ in the title.”)
From Epinal, France, 1834. Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Bacchus in the form of Saint Lundi sits astride a barrel and offers drinks to a group of craftsmen. Each craftsman has his own verse in the song printed on the broadsheet. Spot the menuisier and read his verse to the left of the image.
“I drink to the general joy of the whole table.”
After working at least a half-day on Saturday and then collecting their pay, workmen could look forward to Sunday and a full day off. In this account published in 1824 the writer differentiates between the married and the unmarried mechanic. Contemporary accounts tell us the married mechanic often joined his unmarried companions in Saturday night drinking.
From Ivan Sparkes’ article on the chairmakers of High Wycombe, England we have this description of Saturday activities after the week’s pay was received.
The revelries and drinking continued into Sunday and when Monday morning dawned there were many workmen not in much of a state to return to work – so they didn’t. For those observers of this tradition, Monday became known as Saint Monday in Great Britain, Ireland and America. This ditty is from England in the 17th century:
In 1546 there was an effort in the Venice Arsensal to stop the arsenalotti from observing Saint Monday. They were threatened with a loss of pay for the entire week. Although the workers would make up the lost day by working longer hours the rest of the week, the loss of work on Monday was too disruptive to the organization of a shipyard. Because of inconsistent enforcement of the pay penalty the observance of Saint Monday continued.
The chairmakers of High Wycombe provide another example of Saint Monday.
Much of the the images available for Saint Monday were generated in France. I leave it to you to surmise why that may be.
In France and Belgium Saint Monday was, of course, Saint Lundi. One 19-century French writer referred to Saint Lundi as an uncanonized saint. I can’t think of a better description.
When workmen took Monday as a second day of leisure they weren’t necessarily drinking the entire day. It was also a day for playing games (skittles were popular in England), taking a ramble through town (including a few stops at taverns) and time for trade union meetings.
In Germany, Saint Monday was known as Blauer Montag (Blue Monday).
Dusseldorf, 1838. Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Blauer Montag was widespread enough to earn a place in Flügel’s 1857 German-English dictionary.
An American gathering information on wages and living expenses in Europe during the 1870s made this note about Germany:
Cordwainers (shoemakers) were often at the forefront, both in Europe and America, of the push for better working conditions and a shorter workday. They were also noted as some of the most fervent followers of Saint Monday and consequently are often seen being beaten by their wives.
The observance of Saint Monday began to fade away towards the end of the 19th century and prevalence of the factory system. However, Saint Monday was another step in the working class effort to gain more control over their work lives and to have more time for rest and leisure.
”Why, sir, for my part I say the gentleman had drunk himself out of his fives senses.”
From the “British Workingman” 1878.
Just how much alcohol was being consumed? In 1770 Americans averaged 3-1/2 gallons of pure alcohol per person per year. This is not gallons of a specific spirit, rather a total of all alcohol content. The apogee (or perhaps the nadir) of American consumption was in 1830 when the average consumption was 7.1 gallons of pure alcohol per person. Per the 1830 census the population was 12.9 million. One of the drivers of alcohol availability came from corn in the Midwest. Corn would spoil if shipped to the coastal states, however, it could be distilled and shipped as whisky instead. Whiskey was cheap and easy to buy.
In 1839 a Captain Marryat from England visited America and wrote a multi-volume “Diary in America.” In the section titled “Travelling” he expressed these observations about the drinking habits of America:
In the state of Virginia he commented on the consumption of large quantities of mint juleps and noted “you may always know the grave of a Virginian; as from the quantity of juleps he has drunk, mint invariably springs up where he has been buried.”
He also enjoyed an American champagne.
Edward Young, an American gathering data on wages and the price of living in Europe in the 1870s, was flabbergasted that Belgium had “about one hundred-thousand licensed public houses…for the supply of five million inhabitants.” For every 48 inhabitants there was 1 liquor shop.
In Germany he contrasted the unmarried man with the married. The unmarried laborer rented a bed in a room with others in lodgings close to the workplace. Spending time in a tavern was essentially the only place to relax. Beer, bread and a little meat made up a large part of the diet of both married and unmarried men.
Surveying Great Britain, Edward Young commented “The fact is not forgotten that this investigation is made by a citizen of a country which, next to Great Britain, is perhaps most noted for its large consumption of intoxicating beverages – a country which expends over $600,000,000 annually in spirituous, vinous, and malt liquors.” Based on a report from 1872, England (not all of Great Britain) consumed more than 72 million gallons of pure alcohol at a cost of £120,000,000. At least half of this money was spent by the working classes.
I have just a few comments on the gin epidemic in England that began late in the 17th century and extended well into the 18th century. Gin was very cheap to make and buy and was sought by many as a relief to poverty. Men, women and children were addicted and it ravaged London. There was a “pandemonium of drunkenness” and ruin. A sign over one popular gin shop advertised “Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for two pence, clean straw for nothing.” William Hogarth’s 1751 etching titled “Gin Lane” is thought to capture the misery of the epidemic. You can easily find much more on your own.
The 18th century is also when temperance efforts gained traction and physicians began to think of alcohol addition as a disease.
“Ask God for temp’rance. That’s the appliance only which disease requires.”
In 1722, a century before America reached peak alcohol consumption, Ben Franklin was cautioning against drunkenness and overindulgence. By 1840 there were temperance societies to be found in every state with many affiliated with religious groups. In May of 1840 six Baltimore friends, all artisans, met and decided to stop drinking. Their approach was different from other groups as each member stood and talked about their lives as drunkards (the term alcoholic was not yet used). Their emphasis was on compassion and understanding for the addicted man. They named themselves the Washingtonians, after George Washington, and pledged to stop drinking all alcohol. The group grew rapidly, and as far as we know, it was the only temperance society founded by craftsmen.
The British Workman, published in London, was a monthly magazine advocating healthy living, Christian ideals and temperance. It was filled with illustrations, short stories and testimonials and was advertised as “dedicated to the industrial classes.” The masthead changed each month and featured sketches of men working at various jobs.
The magazine frequently urged employers to provide fresh water for workers in an effort to curb alcohol consumption in the workplace. One well-known illustration from BritishWorkmen has been separated from its intended message.
The craftsman in his paper hat is filling his mug with water, not beer! Did the intended message get lost in nostalgia for the image?
The many satirical drawings of the grim reaper looming over a very drunk man were not promoting temperance, rather a comment on society. In that vein there is a second Drinker’s Dictionary printed in 1886 by Silas Farmer & Co. of Detroit.
The cover stamp pretty much sends the message of the dictionary. A link to the dictionary is at the end of this post.
In 1845 Francis William Edmonds painted a carpenter sitting in his workshop.
“Facing the Enemy” by Francis Willam Edmonds, 1845. Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia.
The carpenter is “Facing the Enemy” and the scene captures the struggle of a man attempting to stop. He rocks back as though repelled but at the same time his eyes are locked on the bottle. Will he succumb?
In the darkness to the right of the open window is a broadsheet tacked to the wall. It is a notice for a temperance meeting. Side-by-side they are in a balancing act. The bottle offers ruin. The temperance meeting offers hope. That he still has a half-bottle of liquor tells us has not yet been able to let go. He took the trouble to put the temperance notice on the wall. His shop is neat and he has his jacket on. Is the temperance meeting that night and will he go?
Shakespeare and his Saturday-to-Monday Bender
After using quotes from the works of Will as titles for each section it is fitting to end with a tale from the 17th century. It seems to have some relation to the observance of Saint Monday.
Top: detail from an undated trade card, British Museum. Bottom: anecdote from “The Curiosities of Ale & Beer” by J. Bickerdyke.
The Drinker’s Dictionary of 1886 can be found here.
Our French readers can find more about Saint Lundi here.
The gallery has a bit more Blauer Montag, Saint Monday and Saint Lundi for you.
