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.
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.
The world of the craftsman is a world of his own. Once in it he is free of a kingdom of which he is the uncrowned king, an inheritor of fine traditions and an explorer in his own right, able to extend his boundaries in any direction that seem good to him.
There will always be beauty beckoning to him just above the horizon, beauty that will lure him on with what the future may bring.
But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.
We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agriculture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb.
I have endured many blessings in life, including that somehow I managed to avoid getting the curiosity beaten out of me at an early age while navigating government indoctrination camps. I am the son of an iconoclast, and thus managed to look at the world with a somewhat skewed vision including the perception of formal education with no small dose of skepticism. I was a mediocre student through much of my secondary schooling, essentially tuning out formal academics and doing only what I needed to move on while focusing on those things which interested me. There was so much fascinating stuff beyond the drivel being pushed in the classroom. Why were we reading a somnolistic civics textbook when there were The Federalist Papers (and even better, The Anti-Federalist Papers) to read? And history? A fascinating subject that takes great effort to be made unpalatable, but institutional “learning” gulags are up to that task.
As I get older I only get more out of step with the popular culture all around me. I love learning, and I delight in passing along what I have learned. No telling how many times my wife has been spared – with great self control on my part – from being regaled with an exhaustive recounting of astounding things gleaned from the U.S. Patent Office data base. This idiosyncrasy makes me distinctly at odds with our bread and circuses culture where I encounter far too many people wanting to know everything but cannot be bothered with learning anything.
Which brings me to Andre Jacob Roubo. In working our way through the volumes, we began to get a glimpse of him as a person. At the recent “Evening With Roubo” dinner that Chris Schwarz unselfishly (or was is selfishly?) organized at Woodworking in America in Cincinnati I delighted in St. Roy’s retelling of Roubo’s biography, but even a spirited story well-delivered can never be complete. Thanks to Roubo himself, there is much more.
Roubo’s lessons and reflections, laundered through Michelle’s literal translation, my massaging of the words to cause them to make sense to a contemporary artisan, and Philippe’s final polishing, make me reflect on my own ignorance, clumsiness, and sloth.
At the close of the final volume, Roubo gives us a remarkable peek into his soul, and I like what we can see. Beginning next week with selected excerpts I will let him tell you — in his own words –- what makes him tick.
