Lost Art Press

I Can’t Find the Item Number for That

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One of the few truths in woodworking is this: The hardware you choose is as important as the boards you select, the joinery you use and the finish you apply.

Cheap, mismatched or poorly scaled hardware will ruin a piece – like using ramen pallet wood for a highboy.

At the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, one of the museum’s largest public collections is its ironwork display. This fantastic ferrite section contains everything from hinges and locks to gates and signposts. I spent as much time looking at the museum’s ironwork as I did at its furniture. The beauty of these handmade articles was enough to convince me that I need to make friends with a blacksmith.

Take a gander at this unremarkable and thoroughly mongrelized cupboard. The piece dates from the 14th century and was said to belong to the last Abbot of Whalley. During its lifetime, it has been scraped of its original finish. Shortened. New back. New shelves. And an extra foot added to the middle.

Despite all this, the piece is impressive because of the hardware. Forget about the inconvenient design of the cupboard (only the two center panels open), or the split wood, or that the top that is made from the gnarliest piece of wood I’ve ever seen in a museum. The hardware is awesome, and it makes this forgettable piece into something worth preserving.

Now if I could just find the item number for this hardware in the Lee Valley catalog….

— Christopher Schwarz

Some Dovetails from the 15th Century

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When I first learned about dovetails, the tale was that this mechanical joint was one of the things that helped transform the squat furniture of the Jacobean era into the soaring vertical styles of the 18th century.

The problem with that tidy story is that dovetails turn up in early furniture and other carpentry constructions, suggesting that the history of the joint is far more complex than most people suspect. I’ve seen evidence of dovetails in Egyptian woodwork.

While at the Victoria & Albert Museum this last week in London, I broke away from my family to examine some of the furniture treasures there. An Italian chest from about 1500 caught my eye. Displayed in the museum at floor height, you couldn’t really see how the walnut chest was joined. I crouched down, and its delightful dovetails became apparent.

Now back in my office I have photos of interesting paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries that show dovetailed chests, but the dovetails are widely spaced and probably poorly represented by the artist (e.g. in some of the paintings the joints clearly wouldn’t be possible in a three-dimensional universe).

These Italian dovetails look very unusual to the modern eye. The maker of this chest had to join planks that were easily 1-1/4” thick. The dovetails are extremely thin and equally spaced. That is, the widest point of each tail was about 1/2” wide. And the widest part of the pin socket was also 1/2” wide. The spacing between the tails was extremely tight – perhaps 3/32”.

Other interesting details for joinery nuts: The top edge of the chest began with one very big half tail, and you could clearly see baseline marks on the sides of the chest, but not the front.

The joinery was A+ from a modern perspective. The chest wasn’t heavily stained or colored, so it was easy to see the remarkable fit of the pins and tails. I hope my work looks this good after 500 years.

I suspect this chest was built for a wealthy individual’s valuables. The chest is inlaid inside and out, according to the museum’s description. And it has two sets of hinges, two sets of locks and a false bottom compartment.

I wish I could have opened it and poked around the inside of the chest to get some more details, but they frown on that at museums (speaking as someone who has been the object of multiple frowns).

But at the very least these photos of the exterior continue to help fill in the often misunderstood relationship between furniture styles and furniture joinery.

— Christopher Schwarz

Update: The Essential Woodworker, by Robert Wearing

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Would you buy anything from these guys??

Well I would, and many others did. So to update all on our newest production here goes:

“The Essential Woodworker” by Robert Wearing has been printed and bound. The book will leave the bindery on Monday, July 19th, 2010. The book will be at Lost Art Press this week and shipping will begin immediately. We are fully supplied with boxes, tape and shipping labels. Thank you all for your support; we are confident that you will enjoy this new book.

Best Regards
John Hoffman

One of the Earliest Freestanding Bookcases

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The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has some great furniture that’s squirreled away amongst the tapestries, sculpture and ceramics. Some of the pieces that I find most amazing (such as one of the earliest Morris chairs made by Morris & Co.) are tucked away in dark corners behind other objects.

But one of the personally most appealing pieces in the museum gets a lot of attention. It’s one of the first free-standing bookcases ever built, which shares an exhibit with a very early gate-leg table, caned chair and tall case clock.

According to the museum’s account, the first free-standing bookcase know was built for diarist and Naval administrator Samuel Pepys in 1666. The bookcases are shown clearly in his library, though I am not sure if they are mentioned in his diary.

The oak bookcase at the Victoria & Albert was built about 1695, probably for William Blathwayt, also a civil servant. The bookcases are similar in construction to the ones in Pepys’s library. The bookcase is in four pieces for easy assembly on-site (though the museum description did not say what the four pieces were — my guess would be plinth, lower case, upper case and top cap).

The doors are mullioned, which was all the rage at the time with the advent of sash windows. Each piece of glass is individually set into the frame. And the shelves are adjustable to accommodate different sizes of books.

After learning about a lot of forms of furniture that “evolved” through history, it’s almost shocking to see a new form that springs forth almost fully formed.

The piece was easily 8′ tall — that’s probably a bit too much for modern homes. But still, wouldn’t it be cool to build one like this for your woodworking books?

— Christopher Schwarz

Gallons of Garbage

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Last year my spouse did something completely insane for my birthday: She bought me something I asked for (but I really should not have).

It was a used bourbon barrel – white oak, banded in steel hoops and charred on on the inside. With a nice big bung hole. My dream was to have one of these barrels as my garbage can at the end of my vise. No more plastic for me. Just a giant gaping black maw of charred oak with some sweet bourbon redolence mixed in.

That was June 2009.

The barrel arrived via truck. No box. Just a label and a barrel. Still, I was excited as Hello Kitty on mini-crayon day. I rolled the barrel back to my shop. But before I wrangled it down the stairs I had a bad thought. What if it wouldn’t fit under my workbench?

A quick check with my tape measure confirmed the drunken obvious: The barrel was actually taller than my bench. So I’d be ramming my handplanes into it. Dejected, I rolled it next to my Karmann-Ghia, where it has sat for 13 months.

After seeing some of the barrels at the Maker’s Mark distillery this May, I became inspired to revisit my personal cask of shame. I decided to cut it down. Give it a flattop. Remove more than 6″ of material and not have the staves fall apart on me.

Here’s what I did. I “borrowed” a silver Crayola from my daughter and used a 1″-thick scrap to mark a line that was 1″ offset below one of the hoops. Then I took a 5/8″ drill and bored a hole adjacent to the wax line. Then it was less than three minutes of work with a jigsaw, cutting around the barrel until the top fell off. Inside were four bungs. Four?

The inside was as black as I’d imagined. I stuck my head in to inhale the sweet smell of aged bourbon.

Sniff.

It smelled like a wet bonfire.

Oh well. I rolled the barrel to my shop. It fit perfectly beneath the bench. I put my plastic garbage can out at the street. Good riddance. And what about the top of the barrel? Don’t know. I rolled it next to the Karmann-Ghia. Maybe next year I’ll deal with it.

— Christopher Schwarz