Category: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

Of all the men who feel the attraction of woodwork, who vaguely feel the urge to make things with their hands, there is a very large number who never let it get any further than that, or who, having started, give it up as soon as the first real difficulties make their appearance.

They say it would be easy, of course, if only they had all the proper tools, and will toy for a long time with the idea of magnificent tool chests, just as if an elaborate equipment could supply the lack of the kind of determination which counts for much more than equipment, and manages to rub along on very little.

Or they will tell you that they haven’t anyone to show them how. If they could study under a really good instructor they would soon be able to master it.

I wonder.

— The Woodworker, May 1940

It takes an age of democratic peace and plenty to produce gimcrackery. Will furniture, like houses, revert to a more substantial form? We know, all the too well, the type that could never survive anywhere within sound of a falling bomb. Having been blown together in the first instance, it would take so very, very little to blow it apart.

It seems to me that we may live to see a definite revival of craftsmanship in furniture making, because strength and soundness of construction, which have been the least of our demands in the latter years of this industrial civilization, will have acquired a new importance.

Or rather, one would say, their old importance.

— The Woodworker, January 1940

The world of the craftsman is a world of his own. Once in it he is free of a kingdom of which he is the uncrowned king, an inheritor of fine traditions and an explorer in his own right, able to extend his boundaries in any direction that seem good to him.

There will always be beauty beckoning to him just above the horizon, beauty that will lure him on with what the future may bring.

— The Woodworker, September 1954

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.

We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb.

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) “Walden”

I well recall — it was my second day in London — a prominent designer offering me a bit of advice that I have never forgotten.

“Whenever you design furniture,” he said, “pin your faith on proportion and accuracy of detail. Do not trouble about decoration; keep that subsidiary; the first thing is repose.”

And he was surely right?

If we carefully analyze our own likes and dislikes, we will find that what appeals first is the graceful proportion of the article we are viewing. The question of style does not here arise. The piece may be a Jacobean sideboard on fairly heavy lines, or it may be a Sheraton table with thin tapering legs; if the proportion is good and the detail is correct it cannot fail to attract.

— The Woodworker, October 1925