Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book

“It is of no use to design furniture; it cannot be designed.”

— Kaare Klint, Mobilia Magazine, No. 56, 1960

As a teacher especially, Kaare Klint exerted a strong influence. With his students, he studied how a piece of furniture was to function and took anthropometric measurements. As a design theorist, Kaare Klint looked back to the crafts tradition and skilled craftsmanship, for which meticulous attention to detail and a knowledge of materials were essential. This was the basis on which new forms were to be created from existing forms that had proved their worth, not a radical break with tradition but rather an evolution.

— http://www.kaare-klint.com/

A fair number of tables from the Middle Ages and later appear to have a couple of extra pieces attached below the tabletop to thicken up the area where the leg tenons intersect the top. I call these “nubs” for lack of a better word, and they raise several questions.

These nubs are similar – very similar – to the battens in early stools and chairs found in Germanic cultures (I’ve also seen some in the Netherlands). Typically, these battens were attached to the seat using a sliding dovetail, they thickened the area for the joinery and they strengthened the thin seat. They strengthened the seat because the grain of the battens was 90° to the seat.

This grain arrangement is typically a Bozo No-No when it comes to wood movement, and a fair number of seats I’ve seen in Germany and American Moravian colonies have split. It’s also fair, however, to say that many have not split and even those that have split still work fine.

So are these Middle Age nubs attached with sliding dovetails? I can’t see any sliding dovetails in the paintings. Did they skip drawing the joinery? Many artists would draw in the wedged through-tenon joinery. But not the dovetails? Were they too small? Are the nubs parallel to or 90° to the grain? Again, many artists from the Middle Ages didn’t draw in the grain, so I don’t think we can answer this from paintings.

How were the nubs attached – if not by sliding dovetails? Were they simply captured between the shoulder of the leg’s tenon and the back-wedged joint above? My guess is this could work. Glue maybe? Nails? I’ve never seen any nails through the top in the paintings – though that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. They could have been driven in from the bottom – through the nubs.

Aw crap; now I’m going to dream of nubs.

— Christopher Schwarz

“Writing a book is like driving a car at night. You only see as far as your headlights go, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

— E.L. Doctorow

I was pissfarting around with my combination square today when Megan Fitzpatrick stopped by the shop to pick up a manuscript to edit (it’s the Hayward Project, by the way). She looked curiously at the panel clamped in my face vise.

“That’s a huge sliding dovetail in this…uh, what is this thing?” she asked.

I gave her the simple answer: a table. But the real answer is something more like: The sum total of a thousand ideas about contemporary furniture design that are finally taking shape – thanks to a manuscript from the 15th century.

Let’s back up. The last six months of work have been incredibly unprofitable for me. I’ve delayed several upcoming commissions (apologies; you know who you are) and I haven’t completed a single piece of furniture to sell since December. Part of this is because I devoted big chunks of time to “Chairmaker’s Notebook” and “Virtuoso.” But I also stumbled on a bright string in the forest that has led me to design, prototype and build pieces that explore new territory for me. So commerce can wait.

The images with this entry are part of the story, but certainly not anything worth commenting on. If you think the legs are chunky, I suspect you don’t even know what you’re looking at just yet.

I hope to have this “table” prototype complete this week. Then I’ll post some finished photos and explain the piece a bit more.

— Christopher Schwarz

Though it might seem like it, I’m not writing a book about medieval furniture. I’m leaving that task to the capable hands of Derek Olson at the Oldwolf Workshop. Check it out here, it’s going to be cool.

The stuff in my book, the “Furniture of Necessity,” has its roots planted in the past, but the leaves are new. The writing, which is about halfway done, is more in the vein of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest.” Yes, the book is about one thing, but also another thing. Which means the Lumberjocks will hate it.

I am drawing inspiration from early furniture because the rules for what was acceptable – “Indeed, Burlington Cockletit, that’s a table and that’s a chair” – were much looser than they are today. And they would use joints in ways that proper furniture makers today do not.

As to the aesthetics of the individual pieces, I want them to look comfortable in an artisan’s home. Simple. Sturdy. And not trying to be a social steppingstone.

More later. I have to pack my truck for Handworks.

— Christopher Schwarz

I had an extra 60 minutes today so I leveled the tabletop, bored the mortises and reamed them. Part of me (the midbrain) likes the rough jack-planed surface now on the tabletop. But the rest of me knows I’m going to make the top as smooth and fine as the legs.

— Christopher Schwarz