It isn’t often that I’m enthused about poor craftsmanship, but when I’m trying to demolish something, drywall screws and questionable joinery are most welcome.
I spent yesterday at our new building with a wrecking bar and a sledge hammer – trying to prep the place for a big Dec. 12 demolition party. We’re going to remove the 1980s-era bar (leaving the 1890s one intact) and haul out all the layers of crap that have been applied to the interior during the last 60 years.
There are a lot of false walls and odd black-light lighting fixtures that I wanted to remove, and I thought I’d get a good start on the project yesterday.
But thanks to the ridiculous way everything was assembled, it all came down with little effort. In some cases it was the paint that was holding everything intact.
Hooray for poor workmanship.
So with that part done, I began the demolition of the ceramic floor. While the cement board below came up easily I then encountered a layer of good craftsmanship. The person who laid the floor below the cement board did a good job. It’s a circa 1950s (or earlier) composite material that is still stuck down and still seamless (so far).
Recently I saw a painting that really should not have featured any furniture at all. My reaction was, “Well that was unexpected.” Have I become more attuned to the presence of furniture (the non-upholstered kind) after reading and indexing several books for Lost Art Press. Have I been spending more time finding images of furniture and woodworking than watching cat videos? Yes, I think that must be it.
So, I did a review of some of my saved images, a few books and films and started noticing…Windsor chairs. I guess in the past the birthday cake and the cats in 1950s-era dresses distracted me.
Windsor chairs by Gorey (l.), Windsors & sideboard by Mainzer (r.)
One of my favorite books is “Under the Cherry Blossom Tree – An Old Japanese Tale” retold and illustrated by Allen Say. Maybe I should have noticed this before with all the time I spent on “Campaign Furniture.”
Is he sitting on…? Yes it is! A Roubo folding campaign stool!
In my 1968 copy of “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame and illustrated by David Stone I stumbed on this cozy scene. Previously, I focused on all the cute little mice crowded together and warming themselves by the fire. Now, all I can see is the (Furniture of Necessity) settle.
In Hitchcock’s 1954 film “Rear Window” James Stewart lives in a really neat studio apartment. The focus is on him, what Grace Kelly will wear in the next scene and what are the neighbors up to. Did you know he had a tansu in his apartment? In 1954?
Tansu to the far right under the hanging light.
I have a tansu so maybe I’m a little tansu-sensitive. But did you notice the two in last year’s animated “Big Hero 6”? A fairly large tansu with sliding doors and multiple drawers was in the workshop where Hiro is putting armor on Baymax.
Large tansu far right.
The better tansu is in Hiro’s bedroom. The bedroom is stuffed with detail and it was hard to get a good long look at the tansu. By watching one clip about 30 times I did get the configuration figured out. The top two-thirds: five square equal-size drawers run lenghwise on the right; on the left side there are four drawers with the top three of equal size, the lowest one is about half again as deep. The next section has sliding doors; the bottom section is one full-width drawer.
Tansu detail.Bottom of tansu, sliding door and drawer below.
You might be wondering which painting started this whole thing. It was an 18th-century Korean painting with tansu. Since this is a somewhat family-friendly blog only the edited version can be shown:
An unexpected tansu on right, giggling girl on left.
I was searching for examples of traditional Korean furniture and this painting was in the search results. It is from “An Album of Erotic Paintings.” There’s no need for furniture in this type of painting! By the way, the giggling girl is pointing at something hilarious.
I’m going to make my searches much, much more specific in future.
Building a Wiltshire Waggon near Longleat, April 1941.
When war broke out in 1939 there was great concern over the losses that might occur in Britain due to bombing, possible invasion and war operations. At the same time Britain was seeing the same changes America was experiencing: the loss of rural industries, the growth of cities, roadways overtaking small towns and mass production practices displacing small businesses and farms. Taking inspiration from America’s Federal Arts Project Sir Kenneth Clark the diector of the National Gallery initiated a program titled, Recording the Changing Face of Britain. He also estsablished a similar program, The War Artists’ Scheme.
Lists were made of sites that were to be documented with pen and ink and watercolor. The goal was to record those sites considered typically English (little of Wales was included, Northern Ireland was left out and Scotland had a separate recording program). There were 97 artists involved with over 1500 works completed. The Pilgrim Trust (funded by American millionaire Edward Harkness) was used to commission works by prominent artists and to pay small sums to other artists who submitted their work. In 1949 the Pilgrim Trust gave the Recording Britain artwork to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the illustrations shown here are from the V & A collection.
One of the ‘other’ artists was Thomas Hennell and he is featured here because he specialized in drawing and painting the countryside and the craftsmen of the countryside. Hennell suffered a mental breakdown several years before the war started and was not eligible to serve with the armed services, however, when war broke out in 1939 he offered his services as an artist to the War Ministry. He drew and painted for the Recording Britain project and was also dispatched to record war preparations. By 1943 he was a full-time and salaried war artist. He participated in D-Day and traveled with the Canadian First Army and later, a Royal Navy Unit, as they advanced during the invasion. In June 1945 he landed in Burma and there documented the end of war operations. Hennell was 42 years old when he was killed in Indonesia in November 1945.
As the war progressed the original lists had to updated as areas of Britain not considered priorities were threatened by bombing or the need for military bases. Hennell was quickly dispatched to Lasham when local residents figured out where an aerodrome was to be built and the Beech Avenue, a stand of trees first planted in 1809, was to be destroyed. From Volume 4 of “Recording Britain” by Arnold Palmer, “…by the afternoon post a letter was dispatched to the artist. Before his [Hennell’s] answer came, he and his hard-working bicycle were well on their way to Hampshire.” To give you and idea of the size of the Beech Avenue and its importance four-fifths of the trees were felled for the construction of the aerodrome leaving two short lengths totaling a quarter of a mile.
The Beech Avenue, Lasham, Hampshire, 1941.
In the early years of the war Hennell captured several craftsmen in their shops carrying on with their work. Although they were living in a time of great uncertainty, and each day’s war news brought more anxiety, there was always the shop to tend to. A new order came in, repairs were needed here or there and each job in the shop gave some small sense of normalcy.
Interior of Workshop of Mr. Clapp, Cooper, Walton Street, Bath, 1940.
Hennell seems also to have captured the ‘personality’ of the various shops. Mr. J.W. Brunt’s wheelwright’s shop seems well-ordered compared to the controlled chaos of his smithy (in the gallery below).
Wheelwrights at Work in Mr. J.W. Brunt’s Shop, Newington, 1940.
The artists that helped create the works in the Index of American Design and the Recording Britain program helped document handmade objects, scenes of daily life and landscapes many of which now exist only on paper. Thankfully, during 1940 and 1941 before he became a full-time war artist, Thomas Hennell completed 33 drawings and watercolors of the English countryside that included several craftsmen’s shops.
Which makes me wonder how many of you have documented your shops, or your corner of the dining room, or basement, or garage? Have you made a sketch of your shop or asked your talented daughter/son/niece/nephew/grandchild to make a sketch for you? Whether a masterpiece done in crayon by a five-year-old or sketched by your art student teenager, either would be a treasure.
Mike Siemsen’s “The Naked Woodworker” has inspired thousands of new woodworkers to get off their duffs, buy a basic set of tools and get down to business building sawbenches and a dang-straight workbench.
What has been surprising for us at Lost Art Press is how the DVD continues to sell and pick up new woodworkers. When we went to Minnesota two years ago to film the DVD we had a great time hunting for rust and building stuff with Mike, but we didn’t expect the response to his DVD to be this strong today.
We think it has a lot to do with his wacky van. But that’s another story for another round of beers.
Check out these two recent blog entries on “The Naked Woodworker:”
Bill “Woodnerd” Traynor writes about how the DVD inspired his first workbench and “birthed a new woodworker.” No foolin’. Check it out here.
And even if you are a more experienced woodworker, check out how the DVD inspired Greg Merritt to build the sawbenches and bench featured in the DVD. Good stuff. It’s here.
We hope to get Mike to do another video on some upgrades he’s made to his bench that he was showing off at Woodworking in America. So stay tuned.
My good friend Carl Bilderback passed away tonight after a hard-fought battle with cancer.
If you are a member of the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association (M-WTCA), then you almost certainly knew him. (And if you are not a member, then he most certainly would want me to twist your arm to do so.)
I first encountered Carl when I was a junior-level editor at Popular Woodworking Magazine in the 1990s. Carl subscribed to all the magazines, and he enjoyed calling up editors and pointing out their factual errors and typos. But he was also generous with his praise when you did something well.
After years of phone calls I finally got to meet Carl in person at a M-WTCA meeting and we became fast friends. For the next decade or so whenever we met at shows or woodworking events, he’d take me aside to show me something.
Usually it was a cache of gorgeous user-grade tools. And he’d ask: Do you know any young woodworkers here who could use these tools?
I usually did. And Carl would seek them out and give them the tools – no strings attached.
He did this all over the country. Sometimes he’d read about a young woodworker and simply send them some tools they could use. He knew that the future of the craft depended on us helping young woodworkers take their first steps into the craft.
For me, he personally stood as an example of both intellectual rigor and endless generosity. He never pulled punches when he thought you were wrong. He wanted the written record of hand tools and techniques to be correct. But he never hesitated in helping you with information, tools or encouragement.
He also was a ridiculous showboater and prankster.
Carl, a union carpenter, had a voice like an angel and would amaze the members of M-WTCA when he would sing at their shows. He also sang at church, funerals, weddings and (occasionally) at a Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event.
During one event in Cincinnati, Carl walked into my office wearing a blonde wig and began signing a pitch-perfect rendition of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” a la Tiny Tim for show attendees.
And even to the end, he sang at karaoke bars with his girlfriend Sue (though they are both teetotalers). She sang country and western. He sang show tunes.
And it was this funny combination of being a carpenter, singer and prankster that leads to my favorite Carl Bilderback story of all time. It’s just slightly off-color, but in a sweet way.
Carl worked as a carpenter mostly in the Chicago area, and during his career he was in charge of a remodeling job at Oprah Winfrey’s place. Winfrey (or her interior designer) had requested that all the screws used for attaching the switchplates be gold plated.
So they sent out all the screws to be plated. When they came back, Carl was put in charge of them so they didn’t get “lost.” At the end of the job, there were a few left, and Carl got to keep them.
Carl traveled a lot as a carpenter. And when he landed in a new town he’d seek out a piano bar or karaoke bar so he might get to sing. When he walked into the place, he’d sit next to a woman who was alone.
After some small talk, he’d tell the woman: “I am going to give you the most incredible screw of your life.” And then Carl would give them one of Oprah Winfrey’s gold screws and tell them the story.
I sometimes wonder where those gold screws are. And I wonder where all the block planes, chisels, miter boxes and saws are that Carl gave people over the years. I hope they’re in good hands and bring joy every time they come out.
