Whether you like Arts & Crafts furniture is irrelevant if you are a woodworker. Even if you dislike expressed joinery, native materials and the color brown, the Arts & Crafts movements in England and the United States were a turning point for craftsmanship.
The ideas behind the movement came from John Ruskin, a 19th-century artist, author and art critic who was about 100 years ahead of his time with his speeches and articles on the dignity of labor, the preservation of old buildings and furniture, and even environmentalism.
David Savage attended this school starting in 1968, which led to his post-graduate studies at The Royal Academy.
Ruskin’s writings were hugely influential with William Morris, the founder of the British Arts & Crafts Movement and grandfather of the American movement. Morris’s teachings have influenced millions of people. But we’re concerned with Ernest Gimson and Edward Barnsley in particular, who adopted Morris’s radical ideas and were the backbone to the furniture side of the English Arts & Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds.
Barnsley trained Alan Peters, one of the greatest woodworkers of the 20th century. Peters taught and mentored David Savage, who continues to teach the high-level of craftsmanship that Peters worked to every day.
So if you look closely enough, you can still see two unbroken lines from John Ruskin to the hands of the woodworkers that Savage and his employees train every day in his Devon workshop.
You might think it’s a stretch, but I’m here to tell you that it’s not. The lifeblood of the Arts & Crafts movement passes through the workshop of Savage’s Rowden Atelier. They push students to do a high level of work that is rarely seen today. They prepare students for a lifetime of making with classes in handwork, machine work, drawing, design and business.
After working with the students at the school for two weeks, I’m quite impressed. The woodworkers enrolled in the school’s 50-week program were fast, devilishly accurate and serious about the craft, sucking up every bit of information offered. And then looking for more.
My only regret is that I didn’t have a school like this when I was 21 and crazy to make things with my hands. If you are looking to design and make furniture, it’s worth the trip. It’s worth the money. It’s worth your time.
— Christopher Schwarz
Take a tour of the Rowden workshop via this blog entry I wrote for Popular Woodworking Magazine.
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Early price sheets, notes on shop practice and shop drawings from the early 18th century are quite rare. So it’s a bit amazing to see that Swann Galleries in New York City will be selling documents from joiner John Widdifield (1673-1720), who was one of the first Philadelphia furniture makers to offer pieces in the William & Mary style.
The documents include stuff we’d all like to see. I mean, good God, man. This is stuff that is only 25 years after Joseph Moxon (the first English-language book on woodworking). Here is a bit from the auction description:
The first 26 pages are devoted to sets of measurements and prices for furniture forms ranging from clock cases to stools, cradles to coffins. He also includes sketches of three pieces: a spice box, a scrutoire (writing desk), and a “chest of wallnutt drawers upon a fraime.”
Also intriguing:
On the verso of page 2 he records detailed instructions for keeping his tools at optimal sharpness.
And for the finishing nerds:
The second section is titled “The Arte of Coloring, Staining & Varnishing According to My Owne Experience.” It includes recipes for numerous types of varnishes; pages 65 and 72 include directions for the japanned lacquers which were becoming popular in that era. Page 71 gives directions for a finish “to put on maps on fraimes or boards.”
The auction is Sept. 17. Previews of the auction items are listed on Swann’s web site here. The pre-sale estimate is $15,000 to $25,000. No I won’t be there, and no, I won’t be bidding. But if any of you pick this up I know a publishing company that would be happy to consider republishing it.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Hat tip to Suzanne Ellison for sending me the auction listing.
Author’s Note: This is the second of a three-part interview with Chris about the Anarchist’s Tool Chest, which is nearing its fifth anniversary. If you missed the first part of the conversation, you can read it here.
Brian Clites: Good evening Chris. I’ll try to keep my questions brief because we’ve received many thoughtful inquires from other readers. In fact, I think I’ll devote the entire third installment of this conversation to the reader questions.
Christopher Schwarz: Good evening. Glad we’re having this conversation tonight. Better than when I get back from England… in September.
BC: When I first read the book, some of the construction details perplexed me. Many of those questions resolved themselves as I completed my own ATC. But I still wonder about some of your hardware choices – particularly the wheels and the lid stay. If you were rebuilding the chest today, would you still buy your casters from a big-box home improvement store? And the lid stay – the “too twee chain” – did you ever find a better solution to recommend to students?
CS:As to the casters, I love them. Though they are Chinese-made, I have yet to find any domestic-made casters that work as well and are that compact. I found some vintage Nylon casters on eBay that I messed around with, but it’s difficult to recommend something unreliable like that to thousands of readers.
On the lid stay, when I wrote the book my research suggested that most tool chests didn’t use one. And for years I’d had my chest lid propped against the wall – a traditional approach.
But some fellow woodworkers convinced me that some sort of stay was the right thing to do, and I agreed with them. I wish I hadn’t. You don’t need a chain or some sort of mechanism or fancy hinge with a stop. Use the wall. It is the only real stop that stops the lid.
CS: Actually I had hollows and rounds (and lots of moulding planes) before constructing the chest. They were stored in the front of my crappy copy of Benjamin Seaton’s chest (please don’t ask me about that chest. It hurts). I actually don’t think moulding planes are essential to woodwork. I know that sounds crazy to people who make reproductions, but most furniture forms built since 1900 don’t need moulding planes. The decorative details are the joinery or, at most, chamfers.
I love moulding planes and use them whenever I can. But do you need them to be a jedi woodworker? No.
If you don’t have moulding planes, use that space at the back of the chest for whatever strikes your fancy – chairmaking tools, marquetry tools or some rolls of carving tools.
BC: Speaking of all the tools in the chest, which ones didn’t really need to be in there? In other words, which tools could the true “naked” woodworker do without? And are there any necessary tools that you, in retrospect, omitted from the text?
CS: You can build a highboy with a knife or (given enough time) erosion, so that’s not really an answerable question. The tools in there are based on 300 years worth of tool inventories (remember the appendix I wrote on this? No one else does). The 1678 list from Joseph Moxon is the shortest list. If you are hard up, use that 1678 list as a starting point. As more tools were invented or improved, then the lists of “required” tools became bigger.
“My list” is not my list. It’s set theory from Moxon to Hayward. I’m not bright enough to come up with a comprehensive list.
BC: Over the years (and most recently in our two-day old forum), I’ve heard lots of talk about building the ATC from “better wood.” Pine – even gorgeous eastern white pine – has a reputation of being cheap, soft, and proletarian. I’ve seen pictures of ATCs built from mahogany and bird’s eye maple. I’ve heard talk of using padauk and purpleheart.
And I even once argued with you along the lines of “if strength is so important, why not 5/4 white oak?”You’ve seemed polite but unmoved by such talk. Is pine merely sufficient for the structure of the ATC, or is it also essential to its soul?
CS: If you don’t need to ever move your chest, then build it from whatever you like. But if your chest has to be moved, use pine or basswood or something lightweight. Your life will be so much easier. I can get the chest into my truck by myself, and that’s because it is pine. A dovetailed pine box is more than strong enough. So the argument for more strength leaves me unmoved.
Aesthetically, I like painted pine chests. But that’s because I’ve seen a thousand of those kinds of chests for every purpleheart abomination. Plus, painted chests just make sense. A beat-up chest that is French polished is a pain to repair. A painted chest is easy – more paint.
I don’t have any class-based attachment to the purity of pine. Wood is wood. Use what you have. Here in this area of the country we have so much black walnut that we used to frame houses with it. Is that wrong?
BC: OK. Get ready. This is my last question tonight, but its long. My favorite chapter in The Anarchist’s Tool Chest is “A Tale of Three Tables.” As a reader who had never met anyone in the book, it was the first time that I got a sense of who you were. Gone was my vague image of a clean-shaven youth tightening clamps on his $159 bench. That distant vision replaced by an actual guy, and his family, and their real tribulations in the modern world. (What married couple hasn’t spilled hot dogs and ketchup all over each other on date night?)
In addition to being able to relate to your family’s frustrations with furniture-like objects, I was smitten by your approach of designing the table based on the family’s habits. Narrow enough that you all could join hands and pass food. Short enough that it would not overwhelm you guys. This table was more than anti-junk; it felt destined to become a member of your family.
Looking back five years, I now notice even more inspiring things about that chapter. I see the seeds of the anatomical approach of By Hand and Eye. I feel the same impulse to simplify that animates your forthcoming Furniture of Necessity. And, most astoundingly, I notice the chapter’s sub-section on Josiah Warren’s Cincinnati Time Store. Wow — are you telling me you had a “ten-year plan” all along? Stated otherwise, what aspirations and values of the ATC have remained bedrocks in your life? And has anything (of that level of personal and philosophical importance) changed?
CS: When I was about 12 years old I can remember sitting in my family’s living room and looking at a hand-hammered copper lamp my family had owned for a couple generations. The lamp had been converted from some weird piece of maratime equipment and had an iron hook on it. And a paper shade. I fell in love with that lamp. (My wife HATES it.)
Before I knew crap about building furniture, at that moment I became smitten with the handmade world. Metal, wood, glass and leather.
Since that weird crystal-clear moment I have tried to surround me and my family with things that were made by human hands. Nothing is more beautiful or reassuring to me.
As Lucy and I struggled to build a life for ourselves we had to make compromises by purchasing ugly, awful and sub-functional things – like the first two tables in that chapter. But the goal was always to have the table that we still use today. And the Morris chair where I drink my coffee in the morning. The Welsh chair where I drink a beer every night.
When I was caressing that lamp 35 years ago, did I have a vision for Lost Art Press, mutualism and some sort of mechanical society? No. But I wanted to make things so badly that (at times) it physically hurt.
So where we are headed now is the only logical path for someone who has those ridiculous feelings – plus the energy to never lay down my tools.
As to the final question: Has anything philosophically changed since I wrote the book? No. I’m still the same person. But what has changed is that I know I’m not alone.
We are less than five minutes into the tour when David Savage stopped to scold the museum docent.
“You really are doing a poor job of displaying this,” Savage said, pointing to a Morris textile hanging in a shadowy corner. “Really, you can barely see it.”
Savage has a reputation for being a straight talker, both to his students and readers of his excellent blog. And you know what? I had to completely agree with him. The gorgeous and subtle textile looked like a blanket hung off to the side to block a draft.
So began a morning at the Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum with Savage and a handful of his students. Savage brought them there to view the museum’s excellent Arts & Crafts Movement Galley and discuss the history of the relationship between makers and customers.
I got to tag along, and I’m glad I did. The Cheltenham has a small but quite astonishing collection of pieces I never dreamed I’d see all in two rooms.
A Sidney Barnsley Hayrake table? Check. Frederick Rawlence coffer? Yup. Ernest Gimson 1885 ladderback armchair. Check. And this checklist could go on for several more paragraphs.
Savage lectured at bit in front of several of the pieces, pointing out design or construction details for the students. At the Gimson armchair, Savage discussed the relationship of the width of the slats and the negative space between each as they progressed up the back.
Then he paused for a minute.
“That chair,” he said, “more than anything, made me a furniture maker.”
It’s a surprising statement on its face. Savage’s work is so incredibly forward-looking and technical. Gimson and his Cotswold companions were trying to harness a bit of the past with their work.
But after a bit of reflection, the relationship between the two men seems clear. They were both independent craftsmen who were incredibly concerned with proportion, good lines, proper construction and beauty.
Below are some of the pieces from the exhibit. If you are every near Cheltenham, the museum is well worth a visit.
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