Students, friends and mental health professionals have asked me how I became interested in researching old crap through books, paintings and by rebuilding vanished forms.
They expect an answer like: “Oh, I’ve always liked history” or some such. That’s not true. I hated history until college.
The real answer is this: In 1986 I read page 101 of Michael Baxandall’s “Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-century Italy” (Oxford). That did it.
OK, that’s an exaggeration. It was actually pages 95-101.
Starting on page 95, Baxandall begins a discussion of the “Rule of Three,” a common way to solve simple commercial math problems. Here’s an explanation by Piero della Francesca:
The Rule of Three says that one has to multiply the thing that one wants to know about by the thing that is dissimilar to it, and one divides the product by the remaining thing…. For example: seven bracci of cloth are worth nine lire; how much will five bracci be worth?
Today we might represent this equation as 7:9 = 5:X, but that’s a fairly modern way to represent the idea. Earlier merchants would line up the parts of the equation like this: 7 9 5 (result).
So why is this a big deal? Many in the merchant culture used this equation every day. It was so familiar that they made jokes that played upon the proportional relationships of numbers.
“The merchants’ geometric proportion was a precise awareness of ratios. It was not a harmonic proportion, of any convention, but it was the means by which a convention of harmonic proportion must be handled,” Baxandall writes.
Such as Leonardo da Vinci’s “Study of the proportion of a head.” Baxandall writes:
…Leonardo is using the Rule of Three for a problem about weights in a balance, and comes up with the four terms 6 8 9 12: it is a very simple sequence that any merchant would be used to. But it is also the sequence of the Pythagorean harmonic scale – tone, diatessaron, diapente, and diapason…. Take four pieces of string, of equal consistency, 6, 8, 9, and 12 inches long, and vibrate them under equal tension. The interval between 6 and 12 is an octave; between 6 and 9 and between 8 and 12 a fifth; between 6 and 8 and between 9 and 12 a fourth; between 8 and 9 a major tone. This is the whole basis of western harmony.
And so I was hooked. Was this true? Do these relationships show up all around us?
We haven’t forgotten about “The Woodworker: The Charles H. Hayward Years” book – it’s just so massive that everything takes a long time to do. I think we are in our seventh year of working on this book now.
As penance, I offer up this awesome drawing from Hayward on making grooves.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. This is just a quick scan of the paper proof. Our real scans are much crisper.
Although Henry Lapp’s craftsmanship was long celebrated in his Amish community, it wasn’t until the 1970s that he was “discovered”. Prior to an auction of a scrapbook of small paintings (found by a collector in the 1920s) an exhibit of his art work was held and a new folk artist had arrived. In 1975 a facsimile edition of his handbook of designs for furniture and household items was published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the work of a 19th century craftsmen was found.
Henry’s handbook came to light in the 1950s when a descendant sold a bureau he had made to a dealer. Inside one of the drawers was a 4-1/2″ x 8″ softcover book with Henry’s stamp on the cover. In 1958 the handbook was donated to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Henry Lapp’s Handbook
The handbook is filled with Henry’s drawings of chests, washstands, desks, boxes, games and toys and a variety of items for use on the farm and in the home. Henry painted each piece in bright colors and often with painted patterns. The handbook was his commercial catalog showing the wide range of goods he could make for his customers. The image above is a great example of the furniture and household items he offered, as well as the exuberance of his color combinations. There is absolutely no reason the boxes used for gathering fruits and vegetables can’t be yellow and green, or for that matter, purple and green. Do you need a seed cabinet? How about a nice orange and yellow combination? A little wagon in red? Let me show you one in green.
Henry Lapp was born in 1862 in Leacock Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and was fifth-generation Old Order Amish. He was born deaf and at least partially mute. Based on the number of his paintings that have surfaced in the last 30-40 years he seems to have drawn and painted from an early age. He was not alone in his artist takents. Besides raising a large family his mother was known as a gifted textile artist and his sister was also a painter. We don’t know for sure if Henry learned his trade from his father or was apprenticed to a carpenter or cabinetmaker. In the 1890 local business directory he was listed as a carpenter; six years later he was listed as a cabinetmaker.
In 1884 Henry’s father, Michael, died. Several years later his mother remarried and within a short time Henry bought about 10 acres of land from his step-brother. His property was right along the Philadelphia Pike in Bird-in-Hand where he built a house, a carriage barn and a cabinet shop. At the front of his shop he had a store for hardware and paint. Eventually he added a windmill to the top of his shop to provide power for his saws and lathes. In an interview for an article in Folk Art Magazine a family member said if Henry was at a social gathering and happened to notice a rise in the wind he would leave and go to his shop to cut lumber.
Henry was known to be friendly and outgoing and liked to travel to visit friends and relatives in Amish communities in Indiana, Ohio and Canada. He made trips to Philadelphia to take his pieces to market and to restock items for his hardware store. He also picked up ideas to incorporate into his furniture designs. Beatrice B. Garvin curated the facsimile edition of Henry’s handbook and noted that his washstand designs were more typical of large urban houses. She also noted the carrot-shaped foot and bulbous rounded foot on some of his pieces were variations of models made in mahogany and rosewood by Philadelphia cabinetmakers. Henry’s flat areas of color were more typical of Welsh settlers east of Lancaster County rather then the painted figures of the old Germanic tradition.
Henry’s paintings included animals, plants, flowers and reproductions of advertisements. His reproduction of an old campaign flyer for the 1868 presidential campaign shows his love of color and eye for detail. By making a quilt of the eagle’s feathers he added color and impact. I think he was also having some fun.
On the other hand, his study of deer is a quiet observation of nature with varying shades of brown paint helping to differentiate each animal (and the antlers and ears of the buck).
Of the many items Henry offered for sale a few pieces are my favorites: an eggbeater, bread toasters, an apparatus for washing day (otherwise known as a laundry rack), a choice of ladders in yellow or green and his wheelbarrows. There is also a bit of whimsey in his page showing a variety of picture frames. Henry painted some pictures in a few of the frames.
Henry was also an inventor. In February 1899 he was issued a patent for an improved shutter bolt to better secure the heavy wooden shutters commonly found on homes.
In 1904, about six weeks before his 42nd birthday, Henry died of lead poisoning from exposure to the paints he mixed. Because he never married his estate was auctioned. An inventory of his shop included chests with woodworking tools, circular saws, a mortise cutter, mortising jack, molding machine, 2 grinding stones, lumber and supplies. Henry’s apprentice, Noah Zook, bought much of the shop equipment and furniture patterns and opened his own shop a few miles down Philadelphia Pike.
A few years ago I was introduced to Henry’s handbook by a coworker from the Lancaster County area: “You don’t know Henry? You have to have a copy of his book!” Chris Schwarz knew Henry’s artwork but wasn’t aware of his furniture handbook. If you don’t know Henry he is waiting for you to discover him and his world. I don’t think you will be disappointed. After all, the slogan above the entrance to Henry’s store was “There is none that equals.”
–Suzanne Ellison
P.S. The gallery has a selection of Henry’s work. If you want more, the Philadelphia Museum of art has all 47 pages of Henry’s handbook online here. Copies of “A Craftsman’s Handbook” published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Tinicum Press are still available (watch out for gougers). This facsimile edition includes short notes on each piece by curator Beatrice Garvan. Good Reads, a small publisher in Lancaster County, also published a softcover edition.
For those of you who have raised children, you know that I am not exaggerating when I say that glitter is the herpes of your kids’ craft supplies.
For about a decade, I regularly found glitter on my face and stuck to odd parts of my body. And, if truth be told, I have passed glitter into our county’s solid waste stream.
Today I removed the top layer of flooring from behind the bar.
So today I was starting some new demolition work at our new building and was concerned, nay – alarmed, to find some of the countertops painted purple with gold glitter. Then, as I was pulling up the fake plastic floor at the front of the storefront, I found that the antique heating registers were also glitter-studded.
The front flooring of the storefront. Plastic floor – gone. Tile…. ugh.
I came home tonight and checked myself for glitter, pawing through my furry bits like I was looking for ticks.
So far, I’m clean.
But as I was removing the black curtains from under the bar, I encountered a bad omen. A disco ball – the ovary of the glitter world. It’s ours. Unless you come and claim it.
I have, I must admit, asked Matthew at Workshop Heaven to donate here. I will, where I can afford it, buy tools in, like the panel saws and see if I can upgrade my own tool box. I will then pass one of my saws on to the young person who will get this tool chest. (They only have one more month to apply.) I wanted a No 6 bench plane; what Matthew sent me very kindly was a 5-1/2 Quangsheng. My aim was to look at these planes again. When they first came on the market I reviewed them and was less than happy. They have since revised these planes and they seem to be getting a good place in the market. I am delighted by this. From the point of view of the young maker with shallow pockets, I hate it that good tools are shiny and rosewood decorated, and expensive.
I have got a Lie-Nielsen No 7 in one of the many student tool boxes here that is a strong candidate. It’s in use at the moment so Jon’s No 6 is showing in my images. My comparison is between the Cheap Chinese and the really good Yank.
First a credit to the work of one man. Tom Lie-Nielsen has done more to enable good making to carry on, in my lifetime, than anyone I know. Quite simply he has put tools out there that give you a chance. For years in the 1980s and 1990s I wrestled with steel bananas. Tool-shaped objects created by marketing departments and accountants that challenged anyone attempting to learn to make. What was wrong you, or the tool? That they were patently not fit for function took us some years to establish. I vividly remember one student flattening a Record No. 6 eight times in 12 months and the damn thing was still moving! Tom gave us flat planes, and publicly, I thank you. Veritas followed behind often with “that’s a great solution but what exactly was the problem?” Their contribution should also be applauded. Alan Reid at Clifton gathered the remnants of a destroyed Sheffield tool industry and heroically attempted to enable good affordable bench planes to be made available to us. His forged steel Victor blades were in all planes at Rowden that could be modified to take them. I am desperately sad that these blades are no longer being made and not offered by the new management at Clifton.
The Western bench plane is a precise and complex version of a chisel stuck in a block of wood.
When any bench plane comes into the workshop at Rowden we check the perimeter flatness on a ground granite slab that has been certificated for compliance to almost atomic flatness. I remember it cost me an eye-watering amount of money. They go on this slab and our finest now rather crumpled feeler gauge is tested around the edge. Most planes these days get past this test (or they go back!!). It’s what is going on in middle of the plane surface that concerns us next.
Putting a straightedge across the plane sole from side to side now slip that feeler gauge under the blade in the centre of the plane sole. Tom’s planes generally come out quite well with half a thou being the worst. This we remedy in the time-honoured way with thick sheet glass, checked for flat, well-supported as a surface to work on. We use double-sided tape rather than spray adhesive and #180-grit wet and dry paper and a little water. There should no need to do too much work on the sole to get most of the hollow out. Wearing the abrasive unevenly is a challenge that good technique just about overcomes.
The LN No. 7 was pretty well spot-on, needing a very short dressing, but the Quangsheng showed a good three quarter thou hollow that I told Jon not to spend more than half an hour working on.
The LN No. 7 has a blade and back iron that does a great job. It’s A2 steel, which holds a decent edge for a long time. For stock removal and general work this is a good blade. For final shaving it’s is a little lacking in sharpness. But you would probably not use this plane for that purpose anyway.
The Quangsheng 5-1/2 is a potential finishing plane being small and fitted with a carbon steel O1 blade. I didn’t go and check this plane out as I have a walnut table in my studio being polished. But Jon set it up and got some pretty fine shavings.
In winding this up, to complicate a simple problem. I offer an image of my current bench plane. Chisel in block of wood, but it’s the most sophisticated version of a simple concept. I would not suggest this for the beginner. It’s like driving a Ferrari, you have to be good enough or it will kill you. But I offer it as an idea to those of you who are older and wiser and needing to conserve energy. These light, incredibly sharp tools can be very effective in the right hands. In Summer School I glued up my chest half day after my fastest students, but was able to catch up, by the afternoon, even allowing for glue to set up, as my planes were that much better at final finish.
Thank you Tom, thank you Matthew. Both planes are going in the tool chest for our young furniture maker.
