Portrait presumed to be Alfred de La Chaussee
Musée du Berry – Bourges, France
19th century oil on canvas
Roubo bench in the dining room?
Anything is possible if you dress the part.
-Jeff Burks
Category: Workbenches
Early Holdfasts. Roman Benches
Holdfasts are one of the most essential items for bench work. But when were they invented?
It’s easy to date them to the 17th century, but what about before that?
Jeff Burks has been doing some research on this item and shared some of his notes with me. While there are still a lot of questions, we can at least date the holdfast back to the 16th century.
Here are Jeff’s notes:
This is the current state of my research into an illustration known as “Le Raboteur.” The source for this image was an oil painting by the Italian artist Annibale Carracci (1560-1609). I don’t have an exact date for the painting, but I know it was acquired as part of the Orléans collection in the beginning of the 18th century. It was subsequently bought by the Earl of Suffolk. On Oct. 11, 1856, the painting and eight others (including a Da Vinci) were stolen from Charlton Park. As far as I know, the original painting has never been recovered. So far I have found five different renditions of the painting as engravings. They are below. The painting depicts Christ and Joseph working at a carpenter’s bench with Mary looking on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annibale_Caracci
Le Raboteur – Conclave Triadis humanae 1670-1686 (shown above)
Etching published in Paris by Pierre Hallier, Print made by Jean Pesne
Inscription Content: Lettered in margin with title and ‘Anibal Carache Pinxit. P.Hlalier cum privil. Regis / Et se vend ches Pierre Hallier Marchand sur le petit pont proche le petit Chatelet à Paris’. Within the image ‘J. Pesne sculp.’ British Museum.
La Samaritaine / Galerie du Palais Royal
Print made by Jacques Couché 1786. Etching and engraving, printed from two separate plates.
Inscription Content: Lettered with production details “Annibal Carache Pinxit – J. Couché Sculpsit”, title, continuing: “De la Galerie de S. A. S. Monseigneur le Duc d’Orléans / A. P. D. R. / Ecole de Lombardie / I tableau d’Annibal Carrache”, size of original painting, and seventeen lines of description, in French. From the first volume of ‘Galerie du Palais Royal’, a set published between 1786 and 1808. This is the first of twenty-eight plates engraved after paintings then attributed to Carracci in the collection of the Duke of Orléans. British Museum.
Trade card of Delaplanche, a French ironmonger (magasin de quincaillerie et outils) with address. The image depicts the Holy Family and is modeled after Le Raboteur, with the addition of tools sold at the shop. The image is etched and the text is engraved. The card is undated, but Waddesdon suggests 1780-1800 because street numbers were introduced circa 1780. Waddesdon Collection.
Sainte Famille, Dite Le Rabouteur
Museé de peinture et de sculpture…Volume 11
Etienne Achille Réveil, Jean Duchesne 1831
http://books.google.com/books?id=9QwrAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA763-IA1#v=onepage&q&f=false
The Illustrated London News printed a story about the theft at Charlton Park in its Nov. 8, 1856, issue. Included with that article was a woodcut engraving of the painting. The print was republished in ‘L’Univers Illustré’, 6 March, 1862, p. 108.
http://books.google.com/books?id=uJc0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA475#v=onepage&q&f=false
— Christopher Schwarz
‘Redneck Jigs’ on ‘The Highland Woodworker’
Despite all my years in Arkansas, I don’t sound like a redneck. But I have a lot of redneck tendencies.
1. “Barbecue” is a noun.
2. Fire is an important accessory to every party. And yes, it’s OK to bring homemade napalm to a potluck dinner.
3. What is unsweetened iced tea? Can you get RC Cola “unsweetened?” I did not think so.
4. All good stories begin with “me and my buddies were drinking” and end with a pickup truck stuck in the muck, a back brace or a second-degree burn in your bathing suit area. (Also acceptable endings: Amorous activity with barnyard animals, snakebites in embarrassing places, waking up naked on the front steps of the Baptist church.)
So when Charles Brock of “The Highland Woodworker” asked me to do a segment on my planing jigs, I asked if I could call them by their proper name: Redneck Jigs.
I do not get precious with my planing jigs. They are nailed and glued-together scraps of plywood or construction material. They are designed to get used up and recycled into smaller redneck jigs.
And they work great.
Most notable part of my segment: How to true a shooting board with a shoulder plane. This works far better than making the fence adjustable.
— Christopher Schwarz
Euromania: Apron Hooks, Shoulder Knives and Parrots
While I am trying to keep a stiff upper lip in my basement shop by working on a British naval officer’s campaign chest, the rest of the house is in a European near-riot.
This morning the postman dropped off another proof of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry,” which I’m going to start plowing into as soon as I stop typing this missive to you.
A few minutes later, the same postman stopped by to make me sign for a package from France. What’s this? He shrugs his shoulders and ambles away. I rip the package open with a knife and suddenly remember I had won this item via French eBay.
It’s a brass apron hook that looks like a workbench that is adorned with a bowsaw, holdfast, mallet and handplane. The bauble is surprisingly small – the brass part is only 1-1/2” long – and quite detailed – I can see the pegs that secure the tenons on the front leg.
Now all I need is an apron that works with these hooks. That shouldn’t be too hard to rig.
Also in the Inbox is a very interesting e-mail from Jeff Burks with an early – 1502 – depiction of a shoulder knife in use.
“As far as I know this is the oldest image depicting a shoulder knife in use, “Jeff writes. “The original was an intarsia self portrait made by Antonio Barili in 1502. I believe this was installed at the chapel of Saint John the Baptist in the Duomo of Siena.
“Antonio Barili (1453-1516) was an Italian intarsia designer, civil engineer, architect and engraver and a native of Siena. From 1483 to 1502 he worked in Siena Cathedral, providing carving and intarsia. This particular intarsia work was destroyed during World War II.
“The Latin inscription on the intarsia reads: ‘Hoc opus ego Antonius Barilis coelo non penicello D excussi an MCCCCCII.’ This translates to: ‘This work have I Antonio Barili made with the carving knife, not with a brush. In the year 1502.’ ”
One interesting description of this self-portrait comments that Barilis seems to be guiding the knife with a pencil in his right hand. Curious.
— Christopher Schwarz
The Wolfenbüttel Joiner
Jeff Burks turned up a great print dated 1651-1725 (artist unknown), that is owned by Herzog August Bibliothek in the German city of Wolfenbüttel.
Lots of interesting things to see here:
1. A “slab” bench. I don’t write about these styles of benches much because I haven’t seen any in person yet – only in paintings and drawings. The benches show up fairly regularly in the images in Mendel’s and Landauer’s house books. They appear somewhat built-in at times, and sometimes have a suggestion of an undercarriage.
2. The shoulder vise/pierced crochet. This is my favorite part of the drawings (besides the guy’s hat). The shoulder vise is a lot like the vise shown (poorly) in Joseph Moxon’s “The Art of Joinery,” which he calls the “bench screw.”
c. The Bench-Screw (on its hither ſide) to Screw Boards in whiſlt the Edges of them are Plaining or Shooting; and then the other edge of the Board is ſet upon a Pin or Pins (if the Board be ſo long as to reach the other Leg) put into the Holes marked aaaaa down the Legs of the Bench…
The bench screw in the Wolfenbüttel illustration appears to be made with a through-tenon that is pegged.
3. The sawbench/axe bench. These proto-Windsor-chair things show up in early illustrations a lot. I like this one because of its slightly curved legs.
What Jeff and I can’t quite get our arms around is the text below the illustration: Wil ich mein Sach mach schlecht und grecht bin ich alzeit ein armer Knecht. A Google translation of the text doesn’t turn up anything meaningful.
If anyone out there can offer a better translation, we’d be grateful.
— Christopher Schwarz