“It is worth noting on the Platte one may sometimes see the shattered wrecks of ancient claw-footed tables, well waxed and rubbed, or massive bureaus of carved oak. These, some of them no doubt the relics of ancestral prosperity in the colonial time, must have encountered strange vicissitudes. Brought, perhaps from England; then, with the declining fortunes of their owners, borne across the Alleghanies to the wilderness of Ohio or Kentucky; then to Illinois or Missouri; and now at last fondly stowed away in the family wagon for the interminable journey to Oregon. But the stern privations of the way are little anticipated. The cherished relic is soon flung out to scorch and crack upon the hot prairie.”
— Francis Parkman, “The Oregon Trail, Works, Vol. 12,” (Little, Brown, 1910) page 103
I spent today at the research center of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) on a scouting trip for my upcoming book “The Furniture of Necessity.” MESDA’s research center in Winston Salem, N.C., is an irresistible magnet for this book because of the museum’s “object database.”
This database has 20,000 objects of furniture, metalwork, textiles etc. in it. And you can browse through it to your heart’s content – the research center is free and open to the public (true Southern hospitality).
I pored over the furniture archives today until the research center closed, and I scanned more than 150 photos and datasheets about pieces of furniture that were produced for the middle-class (whatever that is) – or people with austere tastes.
I got some amazing stuff, including some Moravian chairs that are shockingly contemporary. Plus some great stretcher tables, six-board chests, drop-leaf tables and chests of drawers. I’m afraid I can’t show you my scans because they are protected by copyright, but I will attempt to divert your scorn by writing about something else – Jerome Bias!
I got to have lunch with Jerome, a furniture maker and interpreter at Old Salem. Jerome wrote the great story in Popular Woodworking Magazine about Thomas Day and was the guy who introduced me to the research center at MESDA.
When I visited Jerome’s shop at Old Salem he was cleaning out the bottom of an oilstone box he was building using an old woman’s tooth router plane. We had lunch at the local shop of Martin O’Brien, a cabinetmaker, finisher and stone carver.
The barbeque was terrific, of course, but the conversation was even better. Martin does a lot of work on MESDA pieces and had some great insights into traditional finishing that made me stop chewing my food.
So that’s what I did on my summer vacation. And now I have earned a can of Fat Tire.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I did change the title of this blog. Some readers pointed out that using “chicken” in the headline could be misconstrued. Not my intent. Ever. So I just changed it. This is not worth of comment please.
If I were a smart man, I wouldn’t discuss my failings as an editor, writer and publisher. But I do like to keep people informed on how our upcoming books are going. So here goes:
“Mouldings in Practice” by Matt Bickford. This book is almost completely designed and ready for the printer. What has slowed me down is the number of illustrations. There are hundreds and hundreds. And each one had to be converted from SketchUp to Illustrator, and that is a very manual process. The book will be released this summer. The people who have read this book have had their minds blown. It’s good.
“To Make as Perfectly as Possible” by Andre Roubo with a translation and essays by Don Williams and Michele Pagan. Work is going full-bore on the first volume of this book. The book designer, Wesley Tanner, is building the templates. The translation is complete and the supporting essays are being polished. We are going to publish this volume in two editions: a fancy 11” x 17” deluxe edition (only 500 copies) and a trade edition that will be more like a typical Lost Art Press book. More news to come. The first volume should be out by the end of the year — or early 2013 at the latest. Expect great things.
“By Hand and Eye” by George Walker and Jim Tolpin. I’m reading the first draft of the book now — the final draft will be in my hands in three weeks. It is fantastic. It will be out by the end of 2012 as well.
“The Joiner & Cabinet Maker” audio book, ePub and Kindle editions. I’ll be recording the audio book this week with our voice talent (news to come on that) — the electronic editions of the book will be in the store in a couple weeks. And the second printing of the book is now in stock.
Oh, and my books. I’m working actively on my own books on “The Furniture of Necessity” and “Campaign Furniture” on this Southern tour. I’ve got a few research stops planned for these books. However, don’t expect anything from me this year — I’m trying to get these other projects to press first.
There are a lot more things in the works: Peter Follansbee is working on a book on chests, we have a book on chairmaking in the works and (perhaps) our first deck of playing cards. Finally, there’s our super-secret project I cannot talk about (aw, crap, I just did). It has been in the works for two years now and will be huge. Literally.
According to John Gloag’s “A Social History of Furniture Design: From B.C. 1300 to A.D. 1960,” there are only two forms of furniture: a box or a platform.
When it comes to boxes, nothing is more boxy than a chest (see yesterday’s entry on six-board chests). When it comes to platforms, nothing supersedes a trestle table. Since at least Medieval times, trestle tables have been a staple of the finer castles, manors and huts of the Western world.
The history of trestle tables fascinates me. But it would probably bore most of you. So let me deal only with the juicy parts. Before the Georgian period, the tops of trestle tables tended to be quite narrow, according to David Knell’s “English Country Furniture: 1500-1900.”
Why so narrow? Because diners sat on only one side of the table with their backs against the wall. Diners didn’t sit across from one another. This seating arrangement allowed servants to serve from one side, but it also had a much more practical purpose. In case you were attacked while eating (how rude!) you could flip the table so it served as protection against your attackers.
Another benefit: You could use the benches (usually called “formes”) that were secured to the wall of your hut or holdfast.
As home security improved and dining mores changed, the trestle table became wider but shorter in length. But its basic form survives basically unchanged to the present day.
The trestle table is an early achievement of structural engineering. It is lightweight – I can pick up an 8’ example with one arm – and yet it is impossibly sturdy. It requires a minimum amount of material. It is portable. And, most of all, it is a beautiful form.
From the ends, a trestle table looks like a tree, with prodigious roots, a straight bole and arching branches that support the tabletop.
So perfect is this form that it can be quite hard to date trestle tables accurately. Yes, you can use fasteners and patina to guide you, but those are the same things that guide the furniture forgers or refinishers. Relying on the form or ornamentation is useful if the table has a distinctive form or any ornamentation. Many have neither.
So we are left scratching our heads but admiring the lines of tables such as the one I drew above. Is it English or American? Auctioneers (respected ones) could narrow the date of its construction down to a 100-year period. But was that between 1700 and 1800? Or 1800 to 1900? Or later?
That’s the beauty of this piece and many other trestle tables. Remove the patina and these tables could be at home in the Tower of London or any tower of excess in Manhattan.
This example is 65-1/2” long, 38” wide and 28” high. So we know that it was built after the Georgian period. But after that….
The furniture of the wealthy is usually quite easy to date. The rich are, after all, the ones who can afford elaboration, ornamentation and experimentation.
And thanks to pattern books, museums, researchers and wealthy furniture collectors, we actually know a lot about the high styles of furniture, from Sheraton to Chippendale, and Hepplewhite to Federal.
But when you look at furniture for the lowborn, it can be difficult to assign a date of construction without invasive archaeological techniques. Why? Well there are a lot of furniture forms that have remained unchanged for hundreds of years.
These are simple pieces with little ornament. They are usually made from common materials. And yet, the survivors are well-built, well-proportioned and have a grace that in my book exceeds any bonnet-top highboy.
This is the furniture that I have been immersed in for almost two years now in preparation for a book on what I’m calling the “furniture of necessity.” I’ve been trying to identify different forms of furniture that have remained unchanged for 200 years or more.
And while books have been helpful, the biggest gold mine has been results from auction houses that do not specialize in the high-style stuff. And it’s the data sheets from these auctioneers that are of particular interest. In addition to listing the dimensions, materials and provenance, the auction house will usually try to assign a date range for the piece.
With the high-style pieces, this is usually straightforward – unless the piece is a fake. But auctioneers from all walks of life tend to struggle when dating these low-style pieces. For example: One auctioneer estimated that a six-board chest he was selling was made sometime between 1800 and 1950.
That particular guy might be a moron when it comes to dating furniture. But I found that even larger auction houses can have difficulty dating pieces such as six-board chests. They might date a chest such as the one shown above as being built between 1800 and 1850. And if you know anything about the history of furniture, you know that that was a tumultuous time, which should make the piece easy to date.
As part of my research, I’ve been redrawing these antique pieces in SketchUp, which is a way of removing the patina and wear from a piece so you can see its form without being assaulted by marks of its age. The results have been interesting.
When was the piece above built? It measures 40″ long, 18-1/2″ deep and 24″ tall. It’s poplar. But was it made in 1770 or 1870? Or is it modern? Does the date of its construction change the way you evaluate its design?
I don’t have the answers – just the will to dig deeper into this topic.
