Lost Art Press

Alberti & Palladio

Posted on by fitz
sketch of a contemporary chair using classical proportions
Fig. 30.1. Classical proportions in practice.

The following is excerpted from “The Intelligent Hand,” by David Binnington Savage. It’s a peek into a woodworking life that’s at a level that most of us can barely imagine. The customers are wealthy and eccentric. The designs have to leap off the page. And the craftsmanship has to be utterly, utterly flawless.

How does one get to this point? And how do you stay there?

One answer to these questions is in this book. Yes, the furniture can be technically difficult to make. But a lot of the hard labor involves some unexpected skills. Listening. Seeing. Drawing.

As you will see, it’s a personal struggle – like the production of this book. On the day David began work on his manuscript, he received a cancer diagnosis with a grim prognosis. He wasn’t sure what the book was going to be about or if he could finish it. But David attacked the work with the fervor of a younger, healthier man. He did finish it, and got to see it in print before he died in 2019. His teaching legacy continues at the school he founded, Rowden Atelier, in Devon, England.

When you were born, the first thing that you could see, a thing of enormous significance to your suckling, dependent, vulnerable mind, was a circle. Slowly it came in to focus, and you came to attend it and see the love of your mother. The circle of the eye is the one thing as we grow old that does not change. The circle is a symbol of that humanity.

Circles and squares are a base – unarguable forms that we Classicists have used in our work since 400 BCE. The essence is to stick to low-integer numbers – whole numbers, if you can. I know – one and a half and a bit – but that’s what happens when you let mathematicians in.

The essence of this is not mathematical, it is visual. Just you and your dividers. Do you think the great masons who built Notre Dame did so with stick, rope and dividers, or with a slide rule and a calculator? Artisans’ intelligent hands throughout history have used visual measure, marking out with dividers proportions that made sense to them. Eight of these that way; five of these this way.

Before I round this section up and discuss how we can use classical proportion, I must give you a few more variants on this theme. We have been playing with it for 2,500 years, so there is a bit more to tell.

I want to return to two of the greatest proponents of classical proportions in Renaissance Italy: Leon Battista Alberti and Andrea Palladio.

Alberti's proportion system
Fig. 30.2. These are the systems Leon Battista Alberti, and people such as me, have used all our working lives.

I will be brief as I know this can get tedious. However, this is a reference section to revisit when you have a piece of work that doesn’t fit conventions.

This is the diagonal of the square, a ratio of 1:1.414 – a powerful form first outlined to us by Alberti.
Next comes a simple whole-number variation, a square plus one third: 3:4. Then comes another simple whole-number variant, a square plus one-half: 2:3. Finally, we have a square, again solid and reliable, plus two-thirds of a square: 3:5.

These are the systems Alberti and people such as me, have used all our working lives. Palladio, however, went on to develop this further.

There is a wonderful road going inland from Venice to Verona that is punctuated by a series of magnificent Villas by Palladio. The first on this road is Villa La Rotonda, built with more squares and circles than you can shake a stick at. Then comes Palazzo Chiericati.

Villa La Rotonda and Palazzo Chiericati Palladio
Fig. 30.3. The first is Villa La Rotonda (top left), built with more squares and circles than you can shake a stick at. Palladio’s plan for La Rotonda is above right. Then Palazzo Chiericati is below La Rotonda. Images: Graeme Churchard (La Rotonda); Francisco Anzola (Palazzo Chiericati)

Palladio’s designs incorporated not two but three proportions encompassing a space. The first is “The Arithmetical Mean.” Take the length, add to it the width and divide the total in half to give you a height.

Next is “The Geometric Mean.” Multiply the lesser extreme (4) by the greater extreme (9) to get 36; take the square root to get 6 and use this for the height.

And the third is the “Harmonic Mean,” which gives you a relationship of 12:6 with a height of 8. I have never bothered with it in 40 years of fiddling with shapes – but you may want to Google it. Palladio was no fool.

Palladio’s work formed the basis of inspiration for later architects including Inigo Jones and Robert Adam, who later in the 17th and 18th centuries went on to develop “Neo Classicism” – the form of the English country house. Those of you in the United States – can you see in these the forms and relationships between these and your nation’s great public buildings in Washington, D.C.?

Palladian proportions
Fig. 30.4. Andreas Palladio took this all a stage further involving not two but three proportions encompassing a space. The first is “The Arithmetical Mean.” Take the length, add to it the width, and divide the total in half to give you a height. Next is “The Geometric Mean.” Multiply the lesser extreme (4) by the greater extreme (9) to get 36, then take the square root to get 6. Use this for the height.

So, this is your toolkit – a set of ways other builders have used proportion to create a harmonic whole that is in tune with the natural divisions within nature. The difficult thing is that these tricks have been used by designers and makers for 2,500 years, and your fickle, all-seeing Mark One Eyeball has seen all this stuff; it bores her into a torpid sleep.

“Oh Darling, this is all so last season.”

(What’s the Mark One Eyeball? I use the term to describe the critical visual process. The eye has seen it all, has experienced all the visual tricks that designers and artists use. She knows it all and is desperate for something new, something that amuses and challenges her. The issue is to be amusing and new without being silly, without putting square wheels on a car. Most of the designer/maker frivolities of the late 20th century will end up in the Dumpster of History. The challenge is to amuse the Muse but avoid the Dumpster.)

The answer to the Mark One Eyeball is low, wicked cunning, deception and guile. You’ll recall that I described Leonardo as a cunning magician who distracts with a wave of an elegant glove. It took me about two hours to work out those simple proportions – he was so good at sending you the wrong way. You must do the same.

Never start with a proportional system. Start with a sketch, a drawing that you can feel good about. The relationships should be something you really like.

Then draw it again, coming up to scale, enlarging the image and tightening all the relationships. This is the time to test your drawing’s relationships with 8:13 or whatever. If it nearly fits. Hurrah! Now tighten your design so it fits exactly. If nothing fits, and you have been though everything including Palladio’s Harmonic Mean, have a really hard look at your divisions. Are they really as good as you think? Feeling they are OK is great – but are they really right?

A table by David Savage wiht one live edge and subtle scallops on top
Fig. 30.5. Most of my furniture has curves, and for a damn good reason. Having curves allows me to put the edge of a curve on a Golden Section and a foot just tickling the other side.

This is where I listen to that tiny voice in the back of my head. It’s very different in tone and volume from the negative voice in my left brain. He says in a big voice, “You are Prat.” “You never could do this; why, for God’s sake, aren’t you selling insurance to feed the kids?”

This guy, I can ignore. I know his tone. It’s her tone I want to hear. “David,” she says very quietly, “might you want to think about this again, darling?” That’s the silent killer; she is always right. The more I follow her words the better I get. So, get clever at hiding this proportional stuff.

For example, I have just seen a student’s table elevation. He had wide, lovely cabriole legs on a low table. If he placed a proportional relationship on the outside of the knees, the extreme outside dimension where there are no verticals, that is being a cunning, sneaky woo.

The last thing you want to do is bang up a box with 8″ by 13″ as the outer dimensions. Your eye will not forgive you. It might look OK, but ultimately will be consigned to the “also ran” Dumpster of History. Hitting the numbers dead on and obviously doesn’t often work.

Most of my furniture has curves, and for a damn good reason. Having curves allows me to put the edge of a curve on a Golden Section and a foot just tickling the other side. Sneaky Woo. You be one too, or that miserable bitch will consign your stuff to the “dumpster.”

Better Buildings, Better Furniture

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Visiting John Hutchinson’s workshop outside Columbus, Ohio, was an unusual experience. And he wanted it that way.

To get to his shop, you left his home and set off down a path through the woods. Then you encountered a stream and had to jump over it. Eventually you arrived at a small cabin surrounded completely by woods.

The shop was cozy, well-lit and wonderfully equipped. And whenever you looked out the windows, all you saw were trees.

Hutchinson, a prominent Ohio architect, wanted it this way. He wanted the trip to his workshop to require you to encounter and deal with nature. And as you worked, nature was everywhere you looked.

I know a lot of woodworkers who would build the same sort of shop if they could. But I thought it was odd. Sure, I love trees and nature and birds and deer scat as much as the next woodworker. But I don’t look at trees and say: “Eureka – there is an idea for my next cabinet!”

Instead, I have always been inspired by good architecture. Good buildings. Thoughtful details. Window layouts. Overall proportions. These things are an endless diet of good design.

Yes, you can visit beautiful cities to get a taste of it before returning to your rural or suburban home. But it is another thing entirely to live surrounded by buildings and have them seep into your skin. Good architecture – like good furniture design – requires you to live with it for a while to really understand the patterns behind it. And to see the details that escape your first (or 10th) viewing.

The short film above is adapted from a piece I made a couple years ago for the furniture conference at Colonial Williamsburg. It offers a short architectural tour of Covington and shows how some buildings have directly influenced my designs.

This is why I live in an old (for America) city.

I am sure that other woodworkers can take inspiration directly from nature. And I think that’s great. But I have always relied on architecture. And here’s a look at how that works.

– Christopher Schwarz

Brown & Sawyer at Country Workshops Video: A Plea for Help

Posted on by fitz
John Brown demonstrating how he saddled a seat.

In the summer of 1997, Drew Langsner held a Chairmakers’ Symposium at Country Workshops with John Brown and Dave Sawyer in between classes from the two chairmaking legends. (JB had just wrapped up a Welsh stick chair class and Dave was about to teach an advanced Windsor chair class).

The gathering was captured on video by Grant Libramento, and Drew generously loaned the VHS tapes to us to see if we could do anything with them so the video could be shared with the chairmaking world. We had them digitized (at one of those “preserve your past” commercial places), but I don’t know if some of the quality was lost in translation, or if the originally tech wasn’t great, or if I chose poorly when I sent the videos off for digitizing. I just don’t know. There’s a clip below to give you an idea of the challenge.

So, we’re hoping one of you has mad video/audio enhancement skills, and might like to tackle this wee project. Maybe the video can be enhanced but the best audio solution is to create a transcript/running text crawl? Maybe it can also be condensed into a highlight reel (there are about 12-1/2 hours of footage)? This would be volunteer work (though I suspect some LAP swag might come your way) and we’d then share it for free, too.

If you have the skills/time/inclination, please shoot me an email.

– Fitz

American Citizenship for the Stick Chair

Posted on by Lost Art Press
One of my “American” stick chairs.

I get asked (a lot) why there are so few stick chairs in the furniture record of the United States.

To that question, I reply, “Just you wait.”

Ever since I built my first stick chair in 2003, my aim has not been to reproduce the chairs I adore from Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Sweden. Instead, my goal has been to do what Americans have long done with furniture forms and other cultural movements: Adapt them to this continent and its people.

Black Americans took an African call-and-response form of music and made the blues (then rock ‘n’ roll). Rural Americans – black and white – melded African and Spanish instruments (the banjo and guitar), with spirituals and traditional British songs to make “hillbilly music” and “race music” – what we now call country music and rhythm and blues.

All cultures adopt and adapt elements from “away,” but Americans seem particularly prone to it. We even export our adaptations back across the oceans. In Naples, Italy, anyone can buy pizza topped with hot dog chunks and french fries.

Now before you start calling me “Jingo” Schwarz, know that I don’t think everything Americans do is good. Not even close. We took the éclair and made Twinkies. The baguette became Wonder Bread. It’s a mixed bag of vanilla soft serve and Vanilla Ice.

English secretary, 1810.

Wait, Isn’t This a Woodworking Blog?

In the world of furniture, American designers and woodworkers tended to simplify forms brought over from Great Britain, the European continent and elsewhere. To be clear, there were American woodworkers who equaled the ornamentation and excess of their counterparts across the Atlantic. But in general, American interpretations removed ornament, simplified overall forms and relied more heavily on the solid timber that was the greatest resource of this continent.

English secretary, 1805.

A long day’s walk down King Street in Charleston, S.C., lays out this story that played out in the 18th and 19th centuries. King Street is awash in antiques stores that specialize in British and European antiques. And there are other stores that specialize in American antiques – plus all the house museums that are stuffed with American and imported furniture.

This long stroll (it will take you all day) also shows what the market has decided, whether you agree with it or not. My father would buy English chests of drawers on King Street in the 1990s for $1,200. The American ones were entirely out of his financial reach.

American chest of drawers, turn of the 19th century.
Virginia bookcase, late 18th century.

Finally, to Chair Stuff

British Forest Chairs (aka Windsors) also faced the same story. American forms are – in general – simpler. Simpler turnings. No backsplat. Fewer carved elements. (I must add, however, that my favorite Forest chair of all time is British.)

Yorkshire Windsors, early 19th century.
Massachusetts Windsors, early 19th century.

When it comes to stick chairs, my goal has always been to Americanize them. (I’ve built only a couple close copies of antique Welsh chairs – mostly to prove I could do it.) What does this Americanization entail? 

First, I have changed my designs to reflect the wood we have here. Unlike Wales, we have enormous stands of straight timber. The curved stuff – which the Welsh use for arms and combs – exists here, but it’s more difficult to find. During my two visits to Wales, a walk among the hedgerows revealed a dozens of bent armbows. So my arms are different. They’re built differently, and you will see further changes in future designs.

One of the hundreds of Welsh chairs that are among my “favorites” and influence my designs.

I also tend to favor crisp lines over curved ones. All beautiful and well-worn antiques suffer “erosion,” for lack of a better word. But I try to take that crispness or clarity a little further. I avoid rounded and pillowed profiles for the most part. I like facets. I don’t like turned, round or bulbous components.

I also tend to favor geometry that is more dramatic. Many Welsh chairs had dramatic rake and splay. But a lot of them had little rake or splay. Many had sticks that were dead-vertical. I try to take the dramatic bits and pieces from old chairs and combine them into something else. I won’t say it’s new, as there is no such thing.

I also like color and grain. I am happy to paint my chairs a vibrant color or use an oil and beeswax finish on them. I am dead certain that many old chairs got flashy paint jobs back in the day or a finish that was mostly soot and smoke from the hearth. So my finish choices stand in contrast to what the old chairs look like today.

Why am I telling you this? Well, in some small way, I know that the Welsh get irritated when someone builds one of my chair designs and calls it a “Welsh Stick Chair” on Instagram or Facebook. In truth, they are building an American Stick Chair designed by a guy who dreams of Welsh, Scottish and Irish chairs all the time. So if you want to avoid a Welsh invasion of Kentucky, I recommend you call your stuff what it is: American.

Also, I want to start a conversation about this form and what it could become. I hope that other American makers will look at 11,564 old chairs and see different details that could make up a vocabulary for American stick chairs. Because there isn’t an “American Stick Chair” yet, there is enormous opportunity to explore this idea and contribute to something that just might have some legs.

— Christopher Schwarz

Hands down, my favorite Forest Chair of all time. A lovely early example of the form.

The New Workbench at Lost Art Press

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Megan applies a coat of boiled linseed oil to our new Benchcrafted Classic workbench.

We have just received delivery of a new Benchcrafted Classic Bench in our shop, which replaces Megan Fitzpatrick’s LVL bench in the center of our bench room. Megan and I have been in long-running discussions about building her a new workbench sometime during 2022. But recently we decided to buy (actually, trade) for the Benchcrafted bench. Here’s why.

I’ve built a lot of workbenches since 2000, written five books about workbenches and have been hailed/derided for popularizing the 18th-century French bench for woodworkers who like to use hand tools. And when Megan first approached me about replacing her bench, I said I was happy to help build her a new one based on plans in “The Anarchist’s Workbench” (the book is free to download).

But after looking ahead at our schedule for 2022, my brain began to do the math. I can build a bench in about 40 hours of work. The hardware would be about $400. The wood would be about $500. On the other hand, the Benchcrafted Classic is $2,900. After about 5 seconds of ciphering (and carrying the gazinta), the decision to order the Benchcrafted was obvious.

Megan’s new workbench after its first day of work. She worked it hard.

First, the bench completely fulfills my dictum for a good workbench: That you can work on the faces, edges and ends of boards with ease. The Benchcrafted Classic comes with a Crucible holdfast and a planing stop (they added our planing stop by request), and the holdfast pattern is the same pattern that’s on my workbench.

The bench’s form is based on the 18th-century plan. The joints are drawbored. The raw material is hard maple. And the bench weighs plenty for handwork – 300 lbs. The craftsmanship is excellent – as good as any workbench I’ve made. The joints are tight. The vise runs smooth. And the top is flat.

The bench even comes unfinished – a real blessing. Today Megan added a boiled linseed oil finish to the bench, which suits the way we work. A straight oil finish adds a little protection and color, without adding any slipperiness that comes from a wax or varnish.

If you have been reading my books on workbenches, then you know that this Benchcrafted bench pushes all of my buttons. Benchcrafted got it exactly right with no compromises. And they made it for less than I could, at my hourly rate.

So about the payment. I was perfectly happy to pay cash for this bench. But Jameel and FJ said they were interested in trading the bench for one of my stick chairs and a Dutch tool chest made by Megan. So everyone is happy. 

Megan has a new workbench with a leg vise that works perfectly. Her LVL workbench is going to live in her basement as “an expansive horizontal storage facility.”* And I’m sure it will be used as a workbench. It’s still a good bench – it has just been eaten up and beaten up by all the workholding experiments I’ve inflicted upon it.

And I have 40 more hours this year that I can use to work on other projects – chairs, refurbishing the bar in our storefront, books and new tools for Crucible.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with our Ulmia workbench, my least favorite bench in the shop. And then the workshop will be complete (cue the laugh track).

— Christopher Schwarz

The Crucible Planing stop in the Benchcrafted Classic.

*Megan here. I do still love my LVL bench, and the top remains dead flat after 11-plus years of hard use – an excellent result from our material experiment. But we also built the base out of LVL, and that was less successful. The stuff is made to compress a bit (to handle earthquakes and the like), and compress it did from the force of the leg vise against the top; the top got pushed back from the front of the leg over time – and despite many efforts to fix it, nothing worked for long.

Now, I have a scabbed-on piece of plywood at the top of the leg to bring that front edge flush…but I know it will move again.

It’s not that big a deal to me; I’m used to it and have myriad workarounds – but I don’t like it when students have a less-than-perfect experience with our equipment, hence my desire to build a new bench. But I am delighted to not build one. I have plenty to be going on with, too, and the Benchcrafted Classic is darn close to what I would have built anyway – basically a larger, heavier version of the petite white pine Roubo in my basement shop (which features an OG Benchcrafted Glide vise).

So now I’ll have two good benches in my basement shop – one little, one big. Oh – and one crappy built-in “bench” – I use the term loosely – that was left by a previous owner. It is indeed a horizontal storage facility. The two actual benches, however, will get used for woodworking. In my free time.

— Fitz