This is an excerpt from “Woodworking in Estonia” by Ants Viires; translated by Mart Aru.
MATERIAL USED. In Europe bent-board containers were made of various types of timber. The flexible and easily cut aspen was popular in Estonia, and was also widely used for that purpose in Russia, Finland and northern Sweden.35 In southern Estonia linden was also used. The sides of the sieve, sifter and “külimit” were all made of aspen. In the case of chests and hampers, birch and ash were often used (especially in the islands), as well as bird cherry. In western Saaremaa chests were mostly made of oak. Oak served as raw material for chests in southern Sweden and southwestern Finland.36 In some countries coniferous wood, pine or spruce, were used for the bent sides of the container, but this was not the case in Estonia. On the other hand, the base of many of these containers was often made of pine or spruce.
CUTTING. The boards were always brought in when still green. This was done so as to prevent them from cracking during the bending process. Furthermore, the board had to be split with an axe, not cut with a saw. The sawn board would easily crack or chip, whereas the chopped board retained the tree rings in good condition and facilitated the bending process. For chests, sieves and sifters, boards 5/16″–1/2″ (7-12 mm) thick were used: for hampers 3/4″- 1-1/2″ (2-4 cm). In western Saaremaa very thin (around 1/8″ or 2-4 mm) boards of oak were sometimes used for chests.
There were two ways of cutting boards for the bent container. The primitive method, used throughout the country, was to make use of the smooth surface of the barked tree for the surface of the container, cutting the log accordingly. This process required preliminary cutting of the log to the right size, i.e., into two or four sections. After that the inside surface was hewn out with an axe and a trough axe, until a curved board of the desired thickness was achieved. The inside surface was finally smoothed with a draw knife. Such a board is easily bent. This method was also common in Russia and Finland.37
The author had the chance to follow the second method closely in Avinurme in the summer of 1947. Apart from Avinurme, this way of cutting is used also in the Nõva and Hiiumaa home industries. Here, again, the log was first cut into half and each half was further divided into thirds or halves, depending on the original thickness.
Two boards were obtained from each of the sections. The sharp edges of the segment were smoothed with an axe (Fig. 127), and a line was marked along which the cutting was to be done. The splitting itself followed with three wedges first driven into the edge: one in the middle, and one at each end. Sometimes only one large wedge was used, placed in the middle. As the split formed, smaller wedges were driven into the wood to “guide the split” (Fig. 128). And thus, by driving the wedges even deeper, a double size board was obtained. It was then further split in two, using the same method (Fig. 129). The process is actually very fast, lasting no more than five to 10 minutes.
Both sides of the board are then scraped with the axe, the work being done on the bench. At the same time the bark is removed and the stroke of the axe has to fall along the rings of the wood. Then the curved surface on the outside is cut straight with a planing knife (Fig. 130) and the inside planed with a curved jack plane (Fig. 131). In Avinurme the latter job was done with a draw knife as late as the first decade of the 20th century (Fig. 132).
Splitting with axe and wedges was typical in Sweden and central Europe and was also known in areas where home industry was prevalent (especially for smaller boards). Here they were cut straight, and not along the tree rings, as was the use in Estonia.38 The latter is more closely associated with the first, more primitive method.
35 Филиппов, p. 222; Granlund, p.115-116.
36 Granlund, loc. cit.
37 Филиппов, pp. 224-225 (Simbirsk Gubernia); Tруды XI, p.3158 (Vyatka Gubernia), Granlund, pp. 121-122. Karrakoski, p.144.
Furniture conservator and cabinetmaker Martin O’Brien sent us these intriguing images of low workbenches being used by Spanish woodworkers to build ladderback chairs. And, to add to the multicultural mix, it comes from a book in Japanese.
To me it looks like there are two benches at work here. In the foreground, the guy with the nifty hat is working on spindles. On the bench on the left, the other woodworker is assembling the chair frames.
And it looks like it’s all taking place in a cave.
O’Brien writes:
“One could almost say that it is a cross between a Roman workbench and shave horse. This shop could very well be a cave in Southern Spain. Makes sense that Roman traditions would still have a serious toehold in this region.
“If you need anymore information, I can get the Japanese person who gave me this book to provide some translations. Next time I go to Spain, I’m gonna find these guys.”
I’d love to learn more about these benches. Thanks Martin. It’s fascinating to see these benches in use in southern Europe and northern Europe (Estonia).
You never know what you might find when viewing Fujisan in a Japanese woodblock print. The tool the cooper is using looked very familiar and then I remembered the tools from “Woodworking in Estonia” by Ants Viires. The bigger Japanese tool may be a spear plane but in Estonia it was a grooving knife.
The Estonian tools in use at the time of Ant Viires research in the first half of the 20th century were likely no different from the tools used a century or more earlier. Besides the the size difference in the spear plane and grooving knife I wondered how the Japanese cooper’s tools might compare to those of the Estonian cooper. A quick search turned up the plate below and oddly enough it was in the National Archives of Estonia.
The handwritten title in German translates to “Cooper’s Tools.” No date was provided for this plate but the notations beneath each tool give a clue. The notations provide a scale in the old German measurement, the Fuß* (fuss, or foot). The Fuß was in use until the beginning of 1872 when use of the metric system became compulsory. To find out how long was the Fuß (good luck!) see the bottom of the post for some conversions.
Looking beyond the tools the next question was what were the Japanese and Estonian coopers making and were there any similarities. Going back to “Woodworking in Estonia” I pulled a few photos that date from 1890 to 1939.
As described by Ants Viires coopers made buckets, churns, wash tubs, small baths, beer casks and containers for grain and other food storage. For merchants there were larger barrels for beer, food and many other commodities. For the Japanese cooper it was much the same with the addition of very large barrels for production of fermenting sake and soy sauce.
Many woodblock prints feature domestic scenes with women using buckets and tubs for bathing, washing clothes and for food preparation (I left out the bathing scenes). Much larger tubs and barrels can be seen in making sake.
One of the differences between Japanese and Estonian cooperage is the material used for the hoops. Estonian coopers used small branches, and later, iron for hoops. The Japanese used braided bamboo, then iron and copper. Traditional craftsmen making small pieces and companies using huge barrels for making soy sauce still use braided bamboo for hoops. Overall, there are more similaries than differences in the methods, tools and items made by the Japanese and Estonian coopers.
With so many similarities the next question is about the roots of cooperage in each country. Open wood buckets made using the methods of a cooper have been dated in Egypt to 2690 BC and fully closed Iron Age barrels have been found in Europe from 800-900 BC. By the 1st century BC barrels were in wide use for beer, wine, oil and water. Celtic tribes in Europe can be credited with making and using barrels for beer and wine. Next, here come the Romans because they always seem to be part of adapting, refining, inventing or spreading new technologies.
The Romans, like the Greeks and many early Mediterranean civilizations, used clay containers for storing and transporting wine and oil. Roman rule over the Celtic tribes of Gaul began in the 2nd and 1st c. BC and continued until 486 AD, and it was in Gaul they encountered the barrel. They found wooden barrels a vast improvement over clay amphorae for transporting wine and the added benefit of an improved taste to their wine, especially when the barrels were made of oak.
Did the early Estonian peoples learn cooperage from the Romans? Although Roman coins have been found in Estonian we don’t know if there was a direct connection.
Baltic tribes had trade contact with the Romans via the Amber Road. The Amber Road (actually a network of routes) extended from the North Sea and Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean.
Highly prized, amber from the Baltic has been found in Egypt from 16th c. BC. Like the East-West Silk Road, the Amber Road was a conduit for trading commodities and technology.
For five centuries the Romans controlled Gaul and that extended presence did exert an influence on Germanic tribes not under Roman control. If the Baltic tribes in the area of Estonia did not aquire knowledge of cooperage prior to the end of Roman control the technology may have arrived via trade or war contact with Germanic tribes, or during later invasions by others.
When did Japanese coopers learn their craft? In yesterday’s news (what timing) there was a report that Roman coins had been found in the ruins of a 12th century castle in Okinawa. What next, Vikings? The archeologist overseeing the site said there was no evidence of Western contact with the ancient Okinawan kingdom, but the Chinese did have extensive trade contact with the West from the 14th through the 19th centuries. The coins were probably traded between the Chinese and the Okinawans.
For millenia Japan had extensive trade and cultural contact with its neighbors, in particular China and Korea. During the Nara period (710-794) Japan turned more inward and concentrated on cultivating its native crafts, especially woodworking, ceramics and textiles. As for cooperage, we known that sake has a history extending back 1700 years. In the 8th century sake was favored by, and became regulated by, the Imperial Court. The Imperial regulations covered all portions of the production of sake and included the barrels used.
Soy sauce production dates back about 1500 years and one of the key ingredients of the fermenting process is using kioke, barrels made of cedar. After World War II soy sauce companies were urged to use stainless steel vats instead of the cedar kioke.
On the island of Shodoshima the soy sauce makers did not agree and continued to use kioke. In 2012 Yamamoto Yasuo the owner of Yamaroku Shoyu traveled with two carpenters from his company to learn the traditional method of making kioke from preparing the cedar slats, making the bamboo pins and selecting and braiding the bamboo hoops. They worked with Ueshiba Takeshi of Fujii Wood Work in Osaka Prefecture. They now make there own kioke and other producers are following their lead to revive and continue the traditional craft of making the huge barrels. A short (7 minute) video on making a kioke and the braided bamboo hoop is here (it is really cool).
One of the themes Ants Viires highlighted in “Woodworking in Estonia” was the decline of traditional crafts and the use of plastic items to replace wood. This lament is also heard in Japan and more efforts are underway to work with elderly craftsmen to learn and document traditional craft. In Kyoto this movement is particularly strong.
Nakagawa Shuji, an oke maker (oke are the wooden tubs) in Kyoto was interviewed by Kyoto Journal. Nakagawa talks about his apprenticeship and efforts to keep his traditional craft alive. The oke he makes are refined and copper is used for hoops. In the middle photo below he holds the sen, the two handled plane, that dates back to medieval times (1185-1600 in Japan). You can read the interview with him here.
Conclusions: although the Romans seemed to have left their coins everywhere they did not originate nor spread cooperage around the world. Good ideas and sucessful technology don’t have to have a single point of origin. With some variations in tools and techniques, when humans need to make something to improve their lives they often travel the same path.
–Suzanne Ellison
*There was no standardized measurement for the old German Fuß as it changed through time and it also depended on where you were living in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and parts of France. Here are conversions as recorded in 1830 in three places (chosen to show the range of the Fuß measuremnt and because I either lived or visited these cities as a child): Mainz – 314 mm or 12.36 in, Metz – 406 mm or 15.98 in, Würzburg – 294 mm or 11.57 in.
This is an excerpt from “Woodworking in Estonia” by Ants Viires; translation by Mart Aru.
The use of the plane presumes a base on which the item being planed is fastened. For a long time a simple low working bench, in Avinurme, “tööjärg” (Fig. 56) served for this and on which also other woodwork was done. In places such benches are still used, particularly in Avinurme or elsewhere where home industry has persevered. The older generation throughout the country still remembers planing on the simple bench. The typical Avinurme workbench has two holes at one of its ends, and the board to be planed is fastened either against or between pegs driven in these holes, so that the person planing sits astride on the bench (Fig. 57). In other places there is often only one stick at the end of the bench. Mostly there are two holes next to each other near the middle of the bench and the board is fastened on the bench so it is possible to plane the edge of the board (Fig. 58). Sometimes there is a square hole in the center for the inverted wedge when holding the plane steady and jointing the edge of a board (see Fig. 94).
Such simple workbenches were still usual for Russian home-industry workers at the beginning of the past century. It also appears from representations of Nuremberg cabinetmakers from 1398 and 1444 that they, too, have used identical benches. Only in German drawings of the 16th century do we see higher and wider benches, although still simpler and more primitive than the benches known today. But in the 18th century, benches as represented in drawings and lithographs bear resemblance to the present-day bench.
So the carpenter’s bench (“höövlipink,” also “kruupink, tisleripink, puusepa pink”) as we know it today is no older that two or three centuries. It became known in the village later still, and its actual appearance can be placed within living memory of the older generation, i.e. at the end of the 19th century. Of course, there may have been estate carpenters who had acquired benches somewhat earlier, even a century or more. The rapid development of village cabinetmaking in the second half of the 19th century brought the bench into the village. The story of carpenter Juhan Kaseoks (born 1866) of Keila is characteristic:
“I didn’t have a carpenter’s bench earlier. About 30 years later [1910] there was a little more. Ikmelt Jaan’s father, whose name was Prits, he made the first one. His father was as a very good carpenter. He even started to sell them. Masters bought them from him. I was working at the manor, I naturally had one too. My father-in-law, Maerus, did that work, and he had one too. But households didn’t have them. There was a bench instead of it.”
After the example of carpenter’s benches people from villages started to build at first simpler benches. So, for example, people remember how they provided an end screw to an ordinary low bench. An old-style carpentry product, a planing bench now preserved at the Estonian National Museum (Fig. 60), uses natural branches of the tree skillfully applied in critical functions. Also a bench with screws represented a certain stage of development. Kusta Sinijärv (born 1866) of Karja remembers: “In my childhood we already had a real carpenter’s bench with a screw. At first it had one screw, with one screw at one end. But now the bench has two screws, with one screw also at the side. The side screw came there about 50 years ago [ca. 1900]. An older planing bench (with a side screw) but without a lower drawer has been shown in Fig. 59.
So the carpenter’s bench developed into a generally obligatory carpentry tool. Only the Avinurme woodworkers who make wooden containers still use the old benches. Chairmaking joiners in Avinurme, however, use the up-to-date joiner’s bench.
In his introduction to “Woodworking in Estonia” Mr. Peter Follansbee captured the spirit of this book when he wrote, “The products featured in the book are everyday items found in country households, combining utility and beauty in ways that speak volumes. This book shows us a culture that remained connected to its environment and its traditions long after some others had lost their way.”
An example of the Estonian craftsman’s knowledge of and relationship to wood is the use of naturally occuring shapes to make tools. Mr. Follansbee used the example of forked draw knives (hollowing knives): “A handle made this way follows the fibers of the tree, and it therefore stronger than one made by bending or joining straight sections of timber.” On the cover of the book is a gimlet made from a bough.
As Ants Viires describes it, “The gimlet, like other similar borers, was a tool which had to be applied with force, and it was equipped with an appropriate head that could be braced against the chest. Boring was hard work: “When you bored for some time, your chest bones gave out fire” (Pärnu-Jaagup)…When the work became too tiring, a small boy was placed astride the implement for weight…”
Some of the breast augers (or gimlets) in the top photo are made from branches and like the Estonian example several are carved with dates and initials. The Swedish augers range in size from 31 inches high by 19.5 inches wide to 18 inches high by 13.75 inches wide.
Other objects made from branches and roots that can be found in the book are boat ribs, wheel fellies and sled runners.
I recently showed my mother some of the sketches of Estonian tools made from branches and she reminded me of the slingshots my father used to make for her. When we lived in Fayetteville and Fort Bragg in North Carolina we had to be careful of the wild animals that might come into our backyards. Basking snakes and roaming snapping turtles were the most dangerous. My father used a forked branch to make the slingshot; the sling was cut from the inner tube of a tire. After some obligatory target practice (a tree was the target) my mother was a pretty good shot.
Once a particularly pugnacious (and big) snapping turtle arrived on the patio and was not intimidated by mother’s efforts with her slingshot. With me stranded on our picnic table my mother had to call my father to come home from the airfield and save me!
–Suzanne Ellison
Note: To clarify the use of auger and gimlet in this post here are excerpts from the section on boring tools in “Woodworking in Estonia.”
From Gimlets: ” Like all drills, the gimlet also consists of two parts: the iron and the head. The iron part is usually referred to simply as “auger,” while the head is known as “auger’s head.” On the islands it is called “auger’s handles.”
The gimlets made by early country smiths were of the bowl type (spoon borer). The characteristic veature of this implement was the bit, known as “kaha” (“kahv”) that is shaped like the spoon bowl and made possible boring in both directions.”
From Augers: “Under this term we refer to various borers differing in shape and size, the only common feature being a handlebar placed perpendicular to the top of the shaft. As such the borers are the simplest turning device, which was probably the starting point for the creation of a more complicated gimlet.”
And from Ants Viires’ summary of boring tools: “At the beginning of the millennium, certain borers were already in use in the country. The most primitive was the awl, which was often used after heating. The spoon-shaped borers of the gimlet or auger type were also fairly widespread.”