Lost Art Press

What Made Andre Jacob Roubo Tick? Part 2

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Roubo reveals a clear passion for leaving the generations after him in good stead regarding their access to the knowledge he has compiled. Clearly he reflects with pleasure the task he has just completed in the below passages from his work.

— Don Williams

… it is to be hoped that perfection results from the care and zeal with which I created these volumes. I am persuaded that if it were perfect, the Public, and especially my young companions, would have nothing to desire in this regard. I can well assure you that I have not spared pain nor expense in creating this work(*), so that nothing could compete with its perfection either in the order and arrangement of materials which are presented here, or regarding the research and experiences that I have been obliged to recount.

(*) The most considerable expense which I have been obliged to incur, and that which has been the most onerous to me, is the loss of my time (at least with regards to my establishment) which has necessarily impacted my well-being, a loss perhaps irreparable, and of which nothing can reimburse me other than the pleasure of having been useful to my co-citizens. To be happier still, if my work and my troubles can be really useful, and if the sacrifice which I made (of which I don’t regret, however) can count for something, and counter-balance is some way the inadvertent mistakes of which my work is surely not exempt!

I have also not taught anything by combining example and precept without making remarks of the advantages and disadvantages, and the different occasions where certain forms of works, or certain ways of operating, should be preferred over others, and of which I have shown the advantage on other occasions. This has sometimes placed me in the position of making critiques, perhaps a bit lively, but when speaking badly of a piece I have always respected the worker, at least that was my intention.

As to the arrangement and division of this work (set of books), I have paid attention to do it so that the woodworkers could access the part necessary to them while remaining independent of others, although all the portions fit together and make a complete body of work they should however acquire for the reasons which I gave above. Finally, after seven years of continuous and assiduous work spent in composing and making the designs of the many plates of my work I enjoyed the sweet satisfaction of seeing it completed….

Influences

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The taste or style (or lack of it) of the hollowed tree-trunks of far back in the Middle Ages was probably founded upon (1) necessity, (2) usefulness, (3) the primitive tools of that day, and (4) the fact that there was no previous furniture from which their primitive imaginations might wander to other things.

But let us doff our hats to those people of the past, for their age represents the birth-time of our English furniture. Later in the Middle Ages, when our forbears were learning how to work up wood, the chest must have stood as a standard from which a new style was to evolve. When it had evolved, and chests were seen for the first time, they must have been regarded as not being far removed from the miraculous.

Probably that was the greatest change in furniture that has been made in its history.

— The Woodworker, April 1933

It's Worth It

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But to get the best out of it, we have to let it absorb us, to take us right out of ourselves. Then it will be the best kind of antidote to brooding and worrying and war nerves. And to do this, we want to make it as many-sided an interest as possible. Not to be content with advancing the skill of our hands alone, although this is no small thing, but to find out all we can about furniture – good furniture – and design, all we can about past masters of the craft.

And last, but not least, to train ourselves to see beauty in all its forms, from a shaft of sunlight striking like a shining sword athwart a dingy street, to the glory of an evening sky; to watch for it in books, in pictures, in poetry, in music, anywhere and everywhere, according to our own natural predilections.

For it is that which moulds the taste, makes us able to create lovely things as well as appreciate them.

— The Woodworker, June 1940

The Measure of a Man

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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

The Curtain Rises

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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