Inspecting an antique chair at St Fagans National Museum of History.
I’ve known Chris Williams for a few years, and I now feel we are destined to have our lives intertwined for the rest of my days. There simply isn’t anyone else who thinks about chairs in the the way I do. And when I say chairs, I mean Welsh chairs.
I don’t know if I have any real Welsh in my blood. My latest Ancestry.com profile says 22 percent of my DNA is from England, Wales and nearby. While that’s something, I do know that Welsh chairs are etched in my brain.
When I pulled up to Chris’s tidy home in Llanybri late Tuesday I night, I hugged him, and we talked about chairs until midnight. When I left Saturday morning, our last words (before a warning about a tricky turn on my trip) were about chairs.
And the rest of the time in the middle was all about chairs as well.
Chris Williams points out an armbow growing in a tree.
During my visit, Chris was building a chair in his garage, sneaking off at odd hours to fashion its sticks. Plus, he had two recently completed chairs in the guest room. One was a new design he has been working on (follow him on Instagram if you want see its development) and the other was for his book “The Life & Work of John Brown.”
All three are markedly different. So we spent hours (apologies to Chris’s wife, Claire) talking about the details down to the facets, grain lines and fibers.
While we were muddling minutiae, Chris would stop and exclaim: “You couldn’t say something like that in front of John Brown. He’d tell you to (expletive deleted). He was all about the form.”
Like naughty schoolboys, we did it anyway. Apologies to the memory of John Brown.
I’m sitting at Pantry Fields, the homestead where John Brown wrote “Welsh Stick Chairs,” in a massive chair that was built by John Brown. And I’m surrounded by JB’s family and friends, who generously allowed me into their world on Tuesday for a chat and a delicious bowl of cawl.
It’s a scene I could have never even imagined when I purchased a copy of “Welsh Stick Chairs” in the 1990s – a book that changed the course of my life as a woodworker. Across the table from me is Annie Seymour, JB’s ex-wife and potter. To my left is Molly Brown, one of JB’s daughters and an illustrator, and David Sears, Annie’s husband, woodworker, brewer and long-time companion to JB. To my right is Chris Williams, who had brought us all together.
I was in such a shock that I barely spoke for the first hour. Two things restored my tongue.
The first was Pantry Fields itself. Though I was thousands of miles away from the wilds of Arkansas, the environment felt familiar. Like my family and our farm, the people sitting around this oak table had built Pantry Fields from nothing using the materials around them – railroad ties, recycled windows and even two railway carriages.
The second thing was the wooden item in the image at the top of this blog entry. David Sears laid it on the table and explained.
It was a plug for a peephole that John Brown had used. When he heard someone pull up in a car, JB would remove the plug and peer out to see who it was in order to decide if he would answer the door or not. JB had drawn an eye on the end of the plug, which was a delicious touch to a quirky story that explained a lot about the man. I couldn’t help but laugh.
Pantry Fields, as always, is a work in progress. Annie and David are expanding and improving the buildings. There’s a gallery filled with beautiful pottery, furniture, books and prints. Even an ersatz and delightful bar that David has built. It seems as if something is brewing (and not just David’s beer).
This was just 10 minutes of my first journey to Wales, a five-day trip that has been a visual and visceral tsunami. I hardly know where to begin writing about it.
In some small way I feel a bit like like JB, deep in the workshop and looking out through a peephole at the world. And wondering what is coming down the drive in my direction.
“The Jointer … is the largest sort of Plains by them used, it is perfectly straight from end to end; its office is to follow the Fore-Plain…” Image Courtesy of the British Library
There are several sources we use to learn about a 17th-century joiner’s tool kit. The surviving furniture retains many tool marks left by the joiners. These marks can include those from riving and hewing, layout marks for stock dimensioning and joinery, and even the types of plane blades used in surfacing the stock.
The underside of a joined chest was never meant to be seen. Here, the joiner saved time and labor by leaving the riven and hewn surfaces as is. He laid out the joinery with an awl on the faces of the stock, presumably for transferring the layout from one piece to another.
The interior surface of this stool’s stretchers are not only wedge-shaped from riving, but show the torn surfaces typical of this process. They have been slightly worked with a plane.
Probate inventories taken at the time of a person’s death often itemize details of their household belongings. Many examples of inventories include a tradesman’s tools listed in detail. For example: John Thorp of Plymouth died in 1633, and his estate included the following tools:
1 Great gouge, 1 square, one hatchet, One Square, 1 short 2 handsaw, A broade Axe, An holdfast, A handsaw, 3 broade chisels, 2 gowges & 2 narrow chisels, 3 Augers, Inch & 1/2, 1 great auger, inboring plaines, 1 Joynter plaine, 1 foreplaine, A smoothing plaine, 1 halferound plaine, An Addes, a felling Axe
William Carpenter, Senior, died in Plymouth in 1659. He had many tools listed in his estate:
Smale tooles att 10s; one axe and a peece of Iron att 7s; 4 Iron wedges att 8s; a foot and an old axe att 1s; …one old axe…; the Lave and turning tools att 13s; 3 Crosscutt sawes 15s; smale working tooles 12s; smale sawes 8s; an adds and 2 turning tooles att 6s; three Joynters 3 hand plaines one fore plain 10s; one bucse a long borrer one great goughe 10s; Rabbeting plaines and hollowing plaines and one plow att (pounds)1; 3 Drawing knives att 7s; 2 spokeshaves att 3s; Chisells a gouge and an hammer and a Round shave att 19s; 2 adds att 8s; one vise… 2 beetles…; a grindstone 15s; 2 axes att 6s #
The above inventories are found in C.H. Simmons, Plymouth Colony Records: Wills and Inventories. The values are expressed in pounds, shillings (s), and pence, (d). At this point in 17th-century New England, a joiner usually could expect about 2 shillings 6 pence for a day’s wages, a farm laborer about half that. A day’s work would be 12 hours in summer, and eight in winter.
The inside surfaces of this stool’s aprons were only roughly worked. Riven and hewn textures are just as they came from the froe and hatchet, with only minimal planing. Careful examination of the stiles’ inner faces shows the mortise layout done with an awl.
Inventories can be enlightening and they can also be confounding. Some terminology is rather general. “Broad” and “narrow” are descriptive enough in some cases; yet in the same document the appraisers list the augers by size. The “inboring” planes Thorp had are moulding planes for decorating furniture and interior woodwork. William Carpenter’s planes were described better, hollows and rabbets among them, as well as the plow plane necessary for any panelled work. “Lave” is a phonetic spelling for a pronunciation of lathe.
Two detailed 17th-century English sources that are pivotal in the research concerning joiner’s tools are Joseph Moxon’s Mechanick Exercises; or the Doctrine of Handy-works Applied to the Arts of Smithing, Joinery, Carpentry, Turning, Bricklaying (1683) and Randle Holme’s Academie or Store house of Armory & Blazon (1688). Moxon’s book was published in serial form starting in 1678 in London, and it outlines the tools and techniques of several building trades. While these writings outline the tools used and some of the techniques, neither is strictly a “how-to” on the craft of joinery. It is important to remember that Moxon’s joinery section concerns itself with architectural joinery; making paneling, or “wainscot,” for rooms. He makes no mention of furniture at all. Holme’s work is more complicated. It is a guide for heraldic painters, detailing any images that can be found on coats of arms. However for our purposes it has a wealth of detail about all aspects of woodworking. Holme cites Moxon as one of his many sources, and both men probably also drew from Andre Felibien’s The Principles of Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, and Other Related Arts. (Paris 1676). Like Moxon, Felibien’s work is concerned with architectural woodwork, not furniture.
If we saw this plane with no context, we would be certain it is Dutch. Its appearance in Randle Holme’s book raises questions about the transmission of craft techniques between England and the Continent during the 17th century. There were many hundreds of documented foreign craftsmen in and around London in the 16th and 17th centuries. Their effect on both furniture and tools is often understated. Image Courtesy of the British Library
Both Moxon and Holme illustrate and discuss the necessary tools for joinery, some in more detail than others. Planes get extensive treatment; both works describe the parts of the plane, their function and the features that distinguish one from another.
Randle Holme described a fore plane. “…called the fore-Plain, and of some the former, or the course Plain; because it is used to take off the roughness of the Timber before it be worked with the Joynter or smooth Plain; and for that end the edge of the Iron or Bit, is not ground upon a straight as other Plains are, but rises with a Convex Arch in the middle of it; and it is set also more Ranker and further out of the mouth in the Sole of the Stock, than any other Bits or Irons are.” (Author’s italics.)
Both authors identify the jack plane as being the carpenters’ version of a fore plane. Yet the term “jack plane” does not appear in any probate inventory we have seen, it is always listed as a fore plane.
James Krenov breaking down a large slab outside his home in Bromma, Sweden. Krenov possessed an incredible talent for predicting what kind of wood he might find inside a board – and I find myself looking across the details of his life with the same hope of gleaning what insights lie ahead as I break down his story and legacy.
I returned this morning from a week of researching, scanning and interviewing on the Mendocino Coast of Northern California, where James Krenov spent the last 25 years of his life. While there, I had the privilege of looking through and archiving a huge number of photos, drawings, writings, lectures and correspondences that span Krenov’s lifetime, a bounty of raw materials to work through in the coming months.
In going through the photos and organizing my notes from interviews and conversations with his family, friends, shopmates and coworkers, a complex and mutable portrait of Krenov and his many facets has begun to emerge. There is the poetic writer and gifted orator who inspired so many through his books and lectures; the mentor and teacher who provided the backbone for a craft school that continues to churn out inspiration and talent; a deliberate cabinetmaker, encouraging sensitivity and improvisation, while also practicing a deliberate process of design and iteration; the irascible old master who had little patience for uncaring work or needless invention; a loving husband, ever-thankful for the support of his partner; and a very human father, one whose children tip-toed around the house with caution while he glued up his next cabinet, but who took them fishing and adventuring in the northern wilderness of Sweden.
Krenov and his daughter, Tina, on her first fishing trip in the rural Härjedalen province of Sweden in 1964.
While I am still early in my development of his biography, these raw materials themselves provide a beautiful series of vignettes into Krenov’s vastly complex persona that I hope shed light on just why this cabinetmaker’s story is so worthy of sharing. I’m in the midst of organizing these materials, which will themselves be archived and housed by The Krenov Foundation, so that future researchers and interested parties might find and include Krenov in their work.
In the next few weeks, I’ll be posting these various sides of Krenov (or Jim, or “the Old Man,” or JK) as I dig through the archives. My aspiration in writing this biography is not simply to retell the “who, what, when” of his story, but to shed light on the lives he impacted and those ideas, moments and memories that shaped him as a mentor, writer and craftsperson.
I’ll leave you with the simple triptych below, a very narrow window into one side of Krenov that few outside of the municipal tennis courts of Fort Bragg ever saw. Yet it seems to sum up the competitive, mercurial, sensitive and generous personalities (and free-wheeling band saw usage) that made Krenov who he was. Krenov was an avid tennis player; stories abound in the community about his constant search for a good (but not too good) court mate and the perfect racket.
So I present to you one side among so many: James Krenov, the amateur tennis player.
Krenov at the school’s behemoth Oliver band saw, during school hours, shaping the handle of that month’s racket, in 1992. Photo by David Welter.Two years later, in 1994, and another racket is under the knife (or file, in this case) having its handle smoothed and reshaped. Photo by David Welter.Krenov in action at the Harold O. Bainbridge public tennis courts, just a few blocks away from the school in Fort Bragg, Calif.
P.S. I owe a great many thanks to those who hosted me and sat down for conversations during my stay: Tina Krenov; David and Laura Welter; Ron Hock and Linda Rosengarten; Laura and Thea Mays; Michael Burns; Ejler Hjorth-Westh and Karen Mathes; Jim Budlong; Greg Smith; Todd Sorenson; Crispin Hollinshead; and the current students at The Krenov School (who gracefully put up with my hovering, photographing and rusty volleyball skills). I’m lucky to have such a warm and welcoming community of people to work with over the course of writing this book – it makes all the difference.
Every so often you hear from a reader who really gets where you’re coming from. This is not to say they’re the only ones who get it, just that they take the time to let you know. (An outstanding example is Dan Clausen’sscholarly essay about Lost Art Press.)
A most welcome addition to my bookshelves, @nrhiller’s English Arts and Crafts is simply stunning. If you’ve read any of Nancy’s other work, you already know that she puts as much craftsmanship into her writing as she does into her furniture. And yet this book still pleasantly surprised me in a few ways:
1) The book has the most elegant endpaper of any on my woodworking shelves. An excellent departure from the monotony of the crowd.
2) While there are plans for a few designs inside, the book is not your typical project-by-project guide. Instead, it is an accessible and engaging conversation about the history, aesthetics, and philosophy of the Arts and Crafts movement, all beautifully interwoven with projects and techniques from some of Nancy’s most recent works.
3) Throughout, the pictures are beautifully human. Archival photos and museum pictures blend seamlessly with portraits of Nancy’s craftsmanship. But the in-process photos from her shop are my favorites. Nancy’s workspace looks humble, mortal. Her lighting is not always perfect. These “flaws” combine to bring the images back into dialogue with the text, to create a harmonious tone of real-world art and craft…. [emphasis added]
What spoke to me most was not the part about the endpapers (credit for those goes to Megan Fitzpatrick; the pattern, based on an original design by C.F.A. Voysey, is by David Berman of Trustworth Studios) or the bit about my interweaving of history with projects and techniques (that struck me as the best way to structure this book and underscore the relevance of particular ideals and individuals related to each of the projects—in other words, a no-brainer). It was the bit about the dialogue between the text and the process shots in my shop.
I have some hang-ups about my shop in this age of studiously curated imagery. Anyone who has visited will be aware that I issue a knee-jerk apology at the door. “It’s really a glorified garage,” I say, “but it’s by far the nicest shop I’ve had in my life.” Both statements are true.
It’s not the building that troubles me. Don’t get me wrong. I’d love to work in a converted church, timber-framed barn, or urban horse garage instead of my prosaic pole-barn covered in T 1-11 siding, but none of those is presently an option. My compulsive apology is more a response to the state of affairs inside. Partially finished pieces from magazine shoots (so close to being usable! I can’t bear to cut them up for kindling) preclude anything approaching a Zen vista. Routers and other small machines are stored on open shelves, as are tool bags and boxes, shims, levels, and other equipment for onsite installation work. On the wall above the chop saw are drywall and painting supplies; I’m no drywaller or painter, but some of my built-in jobs require minor drywall repair and painting, and it’s simpler for my clients, as well as more affordable, if I just take care of the whole shebang and save them the bother of choreographing multiple tradespersons. On another wall, more open shelves house boxes of screws, nails, washers, and other fasteners.
Someday I will finish the magazine projects and make doors for all those open shelves, streamlining the visuals and enhancing dust control. (Maybe.)
I am aware of what’s behind my compulsion to apologize: I have internalized prevailing norms regarding how a furniture maker’s shop should look. I personally have no problem with the state of my shop. I work well in a somewhat cluttered environment, maybe because the overwhelming majority of the shops where I have worked, starting in 1980, had a similar, um, “aesthetic.” But when I show the place to new people, I assume they’re judging it against the orderly, dust-free standard published widely in magazines, TV, and social media.
Bench view, 1985, “Farmstead Furniture.” Across the narrow floor from my bench was the bench of one of my bosses. Note the stylish sewing cabinet, which was being repaired for a relative; the plastic draft excluder at the window; the stove set firmly in the midst of flammable materials (not something I have in my shop); and the evident lack of concern with appearances. This original workshop (which would later be subsumed within a larger modern structure) was a converted farm building. Some of the loveliest furniture I have ever seen was built in this milieu.
“But it’s irresponsible to have your shop in that condition when taking process shots for a book!” some may protest.
Really?
Call me cantankerous. In this, as in most subjects on which I write, I want to resist the suffocating pressure to conform. As a woodworker, I come from a background populated by those who made things because (a) they chose this way of making a living, (b) they had limited resources, and (c) they did not give a fig what visitors thought, because it was their shop and they were the ones who knew about the work involved. In each case, they had arranged their working space for the kinds of work they did. These people were judicious about how they spent their time, energy, and money. What mattered was how their shop functioned for them. The workplace was for work.
Things are different today. We live in an age when gorgeous imagery of work and the doing of it can boost sales in real ways (especially when those doing the work are attractive human specimens; this applies all the more to females). And still I want to resist.
*
The whole situation puts me in mind of articles that would be the 21st-century woodworkers’ equivalent of the Woman’s Own magazines we used to read at boarding school in the early 1970s, while sitting on the old steam radiators because it was so cold. Rumor had it that sitting on warm radiators caused piles, a.k.a. hemorrhoids, but we were just too frozen to care. “Is there a right way to hang the loo roll?” headlines earnestly inquired, or “Which type of fringe [Brit-speak for what Yanks call bangs] best suits your facial shape?” There’s an increasingly insidious preoccupation today with how we are seen.
Granted, when your livelihood depends on others, it would be foolish not to take your potential clients’ preferences into account. But at the same time, let’s think carefully about just how much we’re willing to let ourselves be swayed—if not downright defined—by others’ expectations. We live in a moment when we can be followed, visually and in other ways, by people all over the world. Maybe there’s something salutary in standing up for what matters to us instead of allowing ourselves to be overly shaped by our desire to be “liked.”
That Brian Clites (a.k.a. @thewoodprof) got this from those process shots tells me he’s a careful reader.
