It is very difficult for a non-gentleman to behave like a gentleman in battle because non-gents do not have the same belief that all foreigners are bad shots.
— Douglas Sutherland, as quoted in Geoffrey Beard and Christopher Gilbert’s “Dictionary of English Furniture Makers 1660-1840”
With the Roubo workbench class and Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool event behind me, I have returned to the solitude of my own shop and laptop so I can get some Lost Art Press work done. At the top of the agenda: finishing the design of Matt Bickford’s “Mouldings in Practice” and building a portable Campaign-style bookcase.
“Mouldings in Practice” is coming along. The first two-thirds of it are designed and being copy-edited. Unless things go off the rails, the book should be on the street in June. No word yet on pricing.
The Campaign bookcase is a folding oak cabinet that is based on an 1845 example that was owned by the Rev. George Goring Cuthbert of Ireland, who lived in India until 1861. Cuthbert’s was made from teak; mine is made from quartered oak, another common wood for Campaign furniture.
I made some small alterations to the dimensions and shelf spacing so it will hold the maximum number of 6” x 9” Lost Art Press books possible when I travel to woodworking schools and shows. I might also add some extra brass brackets to the bookcase – I have quite a box of them now.
And while I’m pleased with my progress on the bookcase, I’m mostly thrilled to be working without the roar of machines or trying to talk to people while I’m sawing, planing or rasping. This morning I cut all the stopped dados for the bookcase. That meant using a sash saw to slice the walls of the dados, a chisel to remove the bulk of the waste and a router plane to flatten the bottom of the dado. The eight dados took about an hour, including the time it took to take photographs for my forthcoming book on Campaign furniture.
As I was working, however, I had a bad thought. Though the bookcase will carry a bunch of 6” x 9” books, it won’t hold all that many copies of “Mouldings in Practice,” which will be 7” x 10.”
— Christopher Schwarz
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….
— Christopher Schwarz
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.
— Christopher Schwarz
Just because I prefer to use hand tools doesn’t mean I don’t like high technology. The Internet is one of the most decentralized ways to communicate outside the corporate channels.
So Robert Justiana’s version of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” is pretty cool in my book. It looks pretty standard from the outside, but when you open the lid….
I’ll let Robert tell the story instead.
“I was pleased to be invited to submit pictures of my Anarchist’s Tool Chest, but needed to include a short (?) letter.
“First, I would like to thank (Lost Art Press) all for the work you are doing to preserve our craft. A special thanks to Christopher for writing the book, which has had what is best described as a profound effect on me.
“When posting that I was on my third reading of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” I was not exaggerating. My first read was educational and eye-opening. The book gave voice to the way I felt about both modern woodworking and our disposable, consumer society. Moreover, by the time I had finished it, I was determined to build the chest and change the way I work with wood. Before that, I would not have even considered building a project of this scope with mostly hand tools.
“I began working with wood about 25 years ago, but always lusted more for Norm’s arsenal of machines than for Roy’s collection of vintage tools. Until starting my chest, my experience with hand-cut dovetails ranged from terrifying to miserable. Now I actually enjoy them, finding reasons to cut more and trying to make each successive one fit better than the last.
“The second reading of the book was my guide while building the chest, and the third (and ongoing) is as I sell off my extraneous tools and round out the contents of my chest.
“Finally, I must confess one tiny bit of heresy. I was so inspired by your blog entries about painted and decorated chests, and by Peter Follansbee’s carvings that I wanted to embellish my chest. As a nod to my other skill set and to the limits of my carving, I used my small C.N.C. to carve the inside of my lid panel and to pay tribute to the book that inspired me. Thank you again.”
— Robert Justiana