When I arrived in Barnesville, Ga., on Sunday afternoon I found that all the preliminary heavy lifting had been done.
Jameel Abraham, Bo Childs, Ron Breese, Jon Fiant, Jeff Miller, Raney Nelson and Don Williams had finished ripping up the tops and legs with a sawmill and had everything stacked. The wood is beautiful. Huge. And wet – in the “high teens.” I’ve made many benches with wood at this stage in drying, and the Roubo design is well-suited for wood that is a little wet.
The leg vise hardware was artfully displayed. And Jameel was tweaking an enormous banner hanging in the middle of the shop that showed A.-J. Roubo’s plate 11 in all its detail.
All I had to do was unpack my tools, buy some fried chicken and set up to give a presentation tonight on the history of woodworking benches from Egypt to the 18th century.
I’m sure I’ll get to do my share of sweating during the next five days. My work station is in the corner with all the flies.
For the last two years, Peter Follansbee and I have been having a conversation about trestle tables – or rather, we’ve been talking about two different forms of furniture that seem to share the same name.
The term “trestle” is first recorded in the English language about 1400 (“Richard Cœur de Lion” c1330-1450): “They sette tresteles, & layde a borde”). These early references and the paintings from the same period indicate a “trestle table” is actually two or more freestanding stools that are then covered by a board to make a table. It is early knock-down furniture.
Sometime in the last few hundred years, that form has mostly disappeared as a dining table, and the name “trestle table” now belongs to a permanent table where two end assemblies are joined by a long stretcher. The top is joined to the base. Something more like this:
This is basically the form of table that I have at my home, and I love it. It is remarkably lightweight, strong as heck and requires little material to build (the materials for the base cost me $30). I have no desire to replace this table, and I don’t think it could be improved in any way. I even like where my youngest daughter burned through the finish with some nail polish remover the week after I completed the project.
But I need to build another “trestle table” for an upcoming class on the form at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking that starts Monday, July 8. During this class, we’ll spend a day learning about trestle tables from the 1400s to the present so that each student can design a table that suits their minds and materials.
Me, I’m going to build a table like the one shown being dismantled by apes in the early 16th century Flemish painted glass window quarry at the top of this blog entry. The “trestles” are built much like an early sawbench. The top of each trestle is fairly thick, and the legs are tenoned into that thick piece. Each trestle has three legs that are splayed for stability – it looks more like a Windsor chair or perhaps a Roman workbench if you squint your eyes a bit.
I don’t expect any of the other students in the class to follow me down this dark path, so I’ll be loading my laptop with tons of photos of later trestle tables, from the Shakers to George Nakashima.
If you would like to blow off your job and join us next week, there are a few spots open in the class. Click here for details. Otherwise, stay tuned here and to my blog at Popular Woodworking next week as we build a bunch of different tables – all that share the name “trestle.”
— Christopher Schwarz
A trestle from the wreck of the Mary Rose, a 16th-century English ship.15th-century French A-trestles.15th-century German trestles.Another 15th-century trestle.
One of the nice things about building a European chair in Europe is that it is very easy to make it look, well, European.
Today we wrapped up the final day of a class at Dictum GmbH in Munich on building a Kaare Klint Safari chair – the direct descendant of the British Roorkhee chair. To build the chair, we had some trouble finding some of the rustic hardware that I like to build a Roorkhee with, such as solid copper rivets and unplated steel hardware.
But we had no problem getting beautiful quartered European beech, Swedish leather and chromed hardware and rivets, which we all perfect for the Kaare Klint version of this 20th-century classic chair.
In fact, the only things that look a little “off” on this version of the chair are the details I brought to the party: brass buckles and copper rivets.
But let’s not dwell on that.
Instead, take a gander at this 1933 version of an 1898 camping chair. Klint managed to harness the fundamental function of the Roorkhee and shift the decorative details into a modern vein without the chair looking anything other than perfect.
For me, it reminds me of the way that Shaker furniture can be “updated” with some modern details without suffering jet lag across the decades (see the work of Christian Becksvoort and Garrett Hack for more in this vein).
I’m glad the class is over (it took less than four days to make the chair), though it was a heck of a good time. Now I have seven days in Europe with my family and laptop (to finalizing the Roubo details).
Today I wanted to move to Germany. Buy some lederhosen. Raise some sheep.
Because of an unfortunate flood in eastern Bavaria, Dictum GmbH had to move my Roorkhee chair class to Munich. But the Munich workshop didn’t have enough lathes for the 10 students. So we had to move today’s class to Dictum’s shop in Singerhof, which is located two hours northeast of Munich.
And boy was it worth the drive. The Singerhof shop is located in an old farm (the students guess it dated from the 1700s). The farm was large enough that it had its own chapel. And all the buildings surrounded a common courtyard.
Dictum’s shop on the grounds is in a stone room with vaulted ceilings and stone columns. And for the first time during all my visits to Europe, I wanted to move here.
I told Petra Steinberger, the director of Dictum, that I wanted to purchase the farm.
She shook her head.
“After me,” she said.
It was a great day of turning – introducing many students to the lathe for the first time. Tomorrow we return to Munich to start making the leather for the seats.
If, of course, the rivets we ordered actually arrive.
I can’t post the original article from October 2012 – that is the property of Popular Woodworking Magazine. But you’re smart. You can figure it out. Or you can buy the issue here.
