The American Elm (Ulmusamericana) known for its rapid growth and and hardiness was the perfect tree to enhance the towns and cities of a young America. Although there are many Elm Streets and Elm Avenues the devastation of Dutch elm disease (DED) left few of the namesake trees standing.
If you are age 40 or younger you may never have seen the elms of a truly majestic Elm Street. Trees were planted to form vistas of cathedral ceilings. Unfortunately, planting the elms in such density contributed to the spread of DED.
American elms resistant to DED, stands that have been carefully managed and varieties bred for disease resistance can be still be found.
One of the best known stands of old-growth elms can be found in Central Park in New York.
The poet and essayist Stanley Plumly died earlier this month. He was born in Barnesville, Ohio and grew up in Winchester, Virginia and Piqua, Ohio. He was most recently a professor at the University of Maryland and served as Maryland’s Poet Laureate from 2009-2012. In 2016 he was interviewed on the Kenyon Review podcast during which he read his poem ‘Dutch Elm.’ As woodworkers I think you will appreciate how he expresses what was lost, and what can be lost, when part of our natural world is damaged.
If you would like to listen only to his reading of the poem, it starts around minute 19:55. Click here to listen.
The gallery below shows the leaves, flowers, fruit and bark of the American elm.
This weekend I’m at Fine Woodworking LIVE and, to be honest, it’s a tad weird. After being in the other camp for 22 years, it’s disconcerting. I feel like I’m crashing their party.
It’s all in my head. Everyone here is as sweet as milk, and I’m sure it will go fine. (Unless the FWW staff tells me I was brought on to be Christian Becksvoort’s manicurist and astrologer during the event.)
The drive today through Upstate New York was stunning – I got to see Spring occur in reverse. And it reminded me of a fateful drive I took on the same highway 13 years ago when John and I were starting this yet-to-be-named publishing company.
We were racking our brains for a good name for the company. I’m averse to naming things after me. I don’t have a big enough ego to shoulder that load. So “Hoffman & Schwarz Ltd.” was right out. Plus, it sounded like a German audio equipment company.
One of the other contenders was “Tried & True Press” (this was before Tried & True finishing products – I hope). It’s a good name, but I was taught to avoid clichés like the plague.
Another: “Said & Done Publications.” I like this one, but it didn’t have any connection to woodworking. If you’d like to have it, it’s yours.
“Straightedge Publishing.” The problem with this name was it could also be the parent company of a skateboarding magazine. Or a publisher of books for people who don’t consume alcohol or drugs.
And then there was “Sawset Redemption LLC.” (OK, I’m lying and I’ve had two beers.)
In any case, 13 years ago I remember muttering to myself during that long drive when “Lost Art Press” just popped out of my mouth. Nervous that I would forget it, I grabbed a pen and a business card and wrote the name down while using my steering wheel as a desk. This is illegal to do in 36 states, FYI.
So. Good day.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. If you are at Fine Woodworking LIVE, please do stop by and say hello. I’ll be the guy in the Prism Conference Room scraping Steve Latta’s corns.
The grain-painted card table was a surprising new acquisition donated by a descendant of a Blue Hill family. The donor’s family understands that Fisher made the table for her ancestors, Lucy Stetson and William Wardwell, as a wedding gift in the 1830s. While Fisher’s production (or at least the journal’s record of it) had dramatically slowed by that point, it is, of course, possible that he made this piece.
The graining was not complex on this table. There was only one application of red-brown pigment on top of a yellow base color.
The construction and graining is consistent with Fisher’s work, but because there are no other card tables attributed to him, no comparisons can be made. Based on the quantitative analysis of Federal period card tables by Benjamin Hewitt, this table could be safely given a northern New England attribution. The construction of the hinged “fly” rail, the square top with ovolo corners, and the horizontal laminations of ovolo corners suggest this may well have been made in Maine. Because Hewitt’s research does not include any documented Maine card tables, this determination is based on the proximity (both geographically and culturally) to Massachusetts.
The underside of the table shows the construction: half-blind dovetails in the back, and mortise-and-tenons in the front, which are connected by the quarter-circle ovolo corners.
The construction of the ovolo corners were approached in many different ways, but Fisher might have learned the horizontal lamination method by examining a card table that is now in the museum’s collection during one of his many visits to parishioners’ houses.
The grain painting is much less realistic and more stylized than the wardrobe’s panels, but it is similar to the majority of his graining, such as is seen on his boxes. The paint, although originally bold in color, definitely has a New England plainness about it. One scholar has described Maine’s grain painting as “less flamboyant than that of Pennsylvania and New York State productions [and] usually has a reserved, northern air.”
The simplicity of the card table’s graining is comparable to other Fisher work, such as this box.
Although Fisher never mentioned card tables in his journals, he does write about card playing several times. As a conservative Congregationalist, Fisher took gambling to be a serious sin. The Puritan warnings about squandering your resources and the danger of covetousness made a deep impact on his mind. Fisher recalled one occasion as a child when neighbor boys brought a pack of playing cards over for the evening, “the use of which was then forbidden by law. They played a little, and I attempted to play with them.” Although they tried to hide the cards in the morning, his uncle found them out. “He took me aside, questioned me seriously upon the subject, discoursed to me in a mild manner concerning the pernicious effects of gaming, and cautioned me to avoid it. When he had done, it was not my formal promise, but my secret determination never to take cards in hand to play with them again; and through preventing goodness to this day, I have never done it, and hope I never shall.” Fisher then credited “the interposition of Providence” for having “prevented [his] temporal and spiritual ruin.” This event had such a deep impact on him that he seized the opportunity to do the same for a group of children later in his life. It was when he and his family failed to reach their departing ship that the opportunity arose. Fisher recorded, “…[Our] wheelbarrow… on the way broke down and so delayed us that the vessel had hauled off before we could get our chests on board. My sons took a boat and conveyed them on board. By means of these embarrassments I was led to enter in the evening the cabin of a vessel at the wharf, where I found a circle of youths playing cards and gave them a calm, serious lecture upon the subject. The opportunity for this more than compensates for the embarrassment. Wonderful are the ways of Providence!”
The ovolo corners were simply screwed to the front and side aprons. Also note the horizontal three-piece laminations that make up the corners.
Regardless of Fisher’s views on card playing, this furniture form was likely used for more than just games. Gerald Ward has noted how these tables were portable, versatile and inexpensive, and also functioned as “important elements of decoration … in the Federal domestic interior.”
I get a lot of odd email through my personal website, and most isn’t worth mentioning. But there’s one email I get every week that I want to put to bed. It goes like this:
Someone told me you host classes where people build a roubo bench for a week with you and take it home is that true
Sorry, no. It’s not true. We hold some classes at our storefront (complete list here), but I don’t teach much these days. And we don’t have the facilities to teach a workbench class.
I still love to build workbenches and research their history. But there’s no way I could manage a class like that in our little storefront. So if you see this rumor repeated out on the internet, would you mind stabbing it in the eyeball for me? I feel bad for the people who keep asking me with high hopes.
There are lots of people who teach workbench classes. You might ping Mark Hicks at Plate 11, who teaches some classes in his shop along those lines.
I’m flattered to be asked. But like I said, it ain’t me.
Katherine has just completed another batch of soft wax, which is available in for sale in her etsy store. Soft wax is great for the interiors of your projects. We use it on our lump hammers. And one customer really likes it on his shoes as a polish.
However you use it, don’t put it on your beard. It contains turpentine, which is an irritant.
Katherine cooks up the wax in our basement using a waterless process and puts it in heavy glass jars with metal lids. The interior of the lids are coated with a plastic to prevent any rust from forming.
And then Bean the three-legged cat swoops in to steal all the attention.
The American Elm (Ulmus americana) known for its rapid growth and and hardiness was the perfect tree to enhance the towns and cities of a young America. Although there are many Elm Streets and Elm Avenues the devastation of Dutch elm disease (DED) left few of the namesake trees standing.
If you are age 40 or younger you may never have seen the elms of a truly majestic Elm Street. Trees were planted to form vistas of cathedral ceilings. Unfortunately, planting the elms in such density contributed to the spread of DED.
One of the best known stands of old-growth elms can be found in Central Park in New York.
This weekend I’m at 
