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Early price sheets, notes on shop practice and shop drawings from the early 18th century are quite rare. So it’s a bit amazing to see that Swann Galleries in New York City will be selling documents from joiner John Widdifield (1673-1720), who was one of the first Philadelphia furniture makers to offer pieces in the William & Mary style.
The documents include stuff we’d all like to see. I mean, good God, man. This is stuff that is only 25 years after Joseph Moxon (the first English-language book on woodworking). Here is a bit from the auction description:
The first 26 pages are devoted to sets of measurements and prices for furniture forms ranging from clock cases to stools, cradles to coffins. He also includes sketches of three pieces: a spice box, a scrutoire (writing desk), and a “chest of wallnutt drawers upon a fraime.”
Also intriguing:
On the verso of page 2 he records detailed instructions for keeping his tools at optimal sharpness.
And for the finishing nerds:
The second section is titled “The Arte of Coloring, Staining & Varnishing According to My Owne Experience.” It includes recipes for numerous types of varnishes; pages 65 and 72 include directions for the japanned lacquers which were becoming popular in that era. Page 71 gives directions for a finish “to put on maps on fraimes or boards.”
The auction is Sept. 17. Previews of the auction items are listed on Swann’s web site here. The pre-sale estimate is $15,000 to $25,000. No I won’t be there, and no, I won’t be bidding. But if any of you pick this up I know a publishing company that would be happy to consider republishing it.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Hat tip to Suzanne Ellison for sending me the auction listing.
We’ve just received our shipment of “By Hound & Eye” – the cartoon workbook that will open your eyes to the hidden geometry behind excellent furniture.
The shipment is early – way early. We were expecting it in mid-September. And so we are going to end our special pre-publication offer early as well. (Sorry. FYI, when a book is late, we extend the pre-publication offer.)
So if you want a copy of “By Hound & Eye” with a free download of the book, you have until Sept. 4 to order. After that, the free pdf will not be available.
If you ordered a copy of “By Hound & Eye,” it will be packed up Monday and sent via SmartPost, which can take five to seven business days. We’ve also shipped out copies to all our retailers. We don’t know when they’ll add them to their stores, so keep a sharp eye out.
I haven’t seen the physical printed book (I’m in England right now). but I’m very much looking forward to seeing our first softcover workbook.
During our four-year odyssey of documenting the cabinet and workbench, we also shot high-resolution video of the process, including a complete video of us unloading the cabinet.
For the last few months, woodworker and multimedia artist Ben Strano has been assembling all of our footage into a coherent narrative that covers Studley’s life, the construction of the cabinet, the tools and our adventure in documenting it for the book.
The result is a 1 hour 13 minute documentary on the cabinet that features author Don Williams, photographer Narayan Nayar and – most importantly – the cabinet and workbench.
It is a surprisingly engaging documentary, and I say that as a Studley-weary veteran who was there for every frame of the shoot. Strano edited our footage into something that is eminently watchable and features an original soundtrack of period-appropriate piano music (more on that in a future post from Ben).
The DVD will be released on Sept. 25 – the first day of Woodworking in America. We will offer it for pre-publication sales (with free shipping) within the next week or so. And we will also offer it as a streaming video for international customers or those who don’t wish to own a physical DVD.
The DVD will be $20. The streaming video will be $18.
In addition to the documentary, customers who purchase the video will receive a video showing the unloading of the entire cabinet set to music (it will liven up your next party). This footage is nice because it shows a separate still photo of every tool after it is removed from the cabinet.
Author’s Note: This is the second of a three-part interview with Chris about the Anarchist’s Tool Chest, which is nearing its fifth anniversary. If you missed the first part of the conversation, you can read it here.
Brian Clites: Good evening Chris. I’ll try to keep my questions brief because we’ve received many thoughtful inquires from other readers. In fact, I think I’ll devote the entire third installment of this conversation to the reader questions.
Christopher Schwarz: Good evening. Glad we’re having this conversation tonight. Better than when I get back from England… in September.
BC: When I first read the book, some of the construction details perplexed me. Many of those questions resolved themselves as I completed my own ATC. But I still wonder about some of your hardware choices – particularly the wheels and the lid stay. If you were rebuilding the chest today, would you still buy your casters from a big-box home improvement store? And the lid stay – the “too twee chain” – did you ever find a better solution to recommend to students?
CS:As to the casters, I love them. Though they are Chinese-made, I have yet to find any domestic-made casters that work as well and are that compact. I found some vintage Nylon casters on eBay that I messed around with, but it’s difficult to recommend something unreliable like that to thousands of readers.
On the lid stay, when I wrote the book my research suggested that most tool chests didn’t use one. And for years I’d had my chest lid propped against the wall – a traditional approach.
But some fellow woodworkers convinced me that some sort of stay was the right thing to do, and I agreed with them. I wish I hadn’t. You don’t need a chain or some sort of mechanism or fancy hinge with a stop. Use the wall. It is the only real stop that stops the lid.
CS: Actually I had hollows and rounds (and lots of moulding planes) before constructing the chest. They were stored in the front of my crappy copy of Benjamin Seaton’s chest (please don’t ask me about that chest. It hurts). I actually don’t think moulding planes are essential to woodwork. I know that sounds crazy to people who make reproductions, but most furniture forms built since 1900 don’t need moulding planes. The decorative details are the joinery or, at most, chamfers.
I love moulding planes and use them whenever I can. But do you need them to be a jedi woodworker? No.
If you don’t have moulding planes, use that space at the back of the chest for whatever strikes your fancy – chairmaking tools, marquetry tools or some rolls of carving tools.
BC: Speaking of all the tools in the chest, which ones didn’t really need to be in there? In other words, which tools could the true “naked” woodworker do without? And are there any necessary tools that you, in retrospect, omitted from the text?
CS: You can build a highboy with a knife or (given enough time) erosion, so that’s not really an answerable question. The tools in there are based on 300 years worth of tool inventories (remember the appendix I wrote on this? No one else does). The 1678 list from Joseph Moxon is the shortest list. If you are hard up, use that 1678 list as a starting point. As more tools were invented or improved, then the lists of “required” tools became bigger.
“My list” is not my list. It’s set theory from Moxon to Hayward. I’m not bright enough to come up with a comprehensive list.
BC: Over the years (and most recently in our two-day old forum), I’ve heard lots of talk about building the ATC from “better wood.” Pine – even gorgeous eastern white pine – has a reputation of being cheap, soft, and proletarian. I’ve seen pictures of ATCs built from mahogany and bird’s eye maple. I’ve heard talk of using padauk and purpleheart.
And I even once argued with you along the lines of “if strength is so important, why not 5/4 white oak?”You’ve seemed polite but unmoved by such talk. Is pine merely sufficient for the structure of the ATC, or is it also essential to its soul?
CS: If you don’t need to ever move your chest, then build it from whatever you like. But if your chest has to be moved, use pine or basswood or something lightweight. Your life will be so much easier. I can get the chest into my truck by myself, and that’s because it is pine. A dovetailed pine box is more than strong enough. So the argument for more strength leaves me unmoved.
Aesthetically, I like painted pine chests. But that’s because I’ve seen a thousand of those kinds of chests for every purpleheart abomination. Plus, painted chests just make sense. A beat-up chest that is French polished is a pain to repair. A painted chest is easy – more paint.
I don’t have any class-based attachment to the purity of pine. Wood is wood. Use what you have. Here in this area of the country we have so much black walnut that we used to frame houses with it. Is that wrong?
BC: OK. Get ready. This is my last question tonight, but its long. My favorite chapter in The Anarchist’s Tool Chest is “A Tale of Three Tables.” As a reader who had never met anyone in the book, it was the first time that I got a sense of who you were. Gone was my vague image of a clean-shaven youth tightening clamps on his $159 bench. That distant vision replaced by an actual guy, and his family, and their real tribulations in the modern world. (What married couple hasn’t spilled hot dogs and ketchup all over each other on date night?)
In addition to being able to relate to your family’s frustrations with furniture-like objects, I was smitten by your approach of designing the table based on the family’s habits. Narrow enough that you all could join hands and pass food. Short enough that it would not overwhelm you guys. This table was more than anti-junk; it felt destined to become a member of your family.
Looking back five years, I now notice even more inspiring things about that chapter. I see the seeds of the anatomical approach of By Hand and Eye. I feel the same impulse to simplify that animates your forthcoming Furniture of Necessity. And, most astoundingly, I notice the chapter’s sub-section on Josiah Warren’s Cincinnati Time Store. Wow — are you telling me you had a “ten-year plan” all along? Stated otherwise, what aspirations and values of the ATC have remained bedrocks in your life? And has anything (of that level of personal and philosophical importance) changed?
CS: When I was about 12 years old I can remember sitting in my family’s living room and looking at a hand-hammered copper lamp my family had owned for a couple generations. The lamp had been converted from some weird piece of maratime equipment and had an iron hook on it. And a paper shade. I fell in love with that lamp. (My wife HATES it.)
Before I knew crap about building furniture, at that moment I became smitten with the handmade world. Metal, wood, glass and leather.
Since that weird crystal-clear moment I have tried to surround me and my family with things that were made by human hands. Nothing is more beautiful or reassuring to me.
As Lucy and I struggled to build a life for ourselves we had to make compromises by purchasing ugly, awful and sub-functional things – like the first two tables in that chapter. But the goal was always to have the table that we still use today. And the Morris chair where I drink my coffee in the morning. The Welsh chair where I drink a beer every night.
When I was caressing that lamp 35 years ago, did I have a vision for Lost Art Press, mutualism and some sort of mechanical society? No. But I wanted to make things so badly that (at times) it physically hurt.
So where we are headed now is the only logical path for someone who has those ridiculous feelings – plus the energy to never lay down my tools.
As to the final question: Has anything philosophically changed since I wrote the book? No. I’m still the same person. But what has changed is that I know I’m not alone.
Earlier this summer Jeff Burks posted an article “Elephants at Work.” The article below presents a additional look at elephants working in the timber industry and the changes already underway in the industry and the working life of Burmese carpenters. The artwork is by an unknown Burmese artist and is part of a series of watercolors on Burmese life late in the 19th century. The descriptions were written by a missionary, possibly more than one. The series is not dated but was purchased from the original collector in 1897. The collection is from the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.
Note: the red markings on the carpenters are traditional tattoos.
Sin-mya Elephants
Elephants used to be numerous in all forests of Burmah; but owing to the spread of civilization, capture and slaughter, the wild elephant is rarely met in Lower Burmah. In Upper Burma, the animal is chiefly used, as in India, for state processions and in military display; but the gangs of foresters from British Burmah make a much more practical use of this creature’s enormous strength.
He is used in hauling trunks of timber to the water-courses preparatory to floating them down the rivers. In Maulmein and Rangoon, Elephants are highly trained and display wonderful sagacity in hauling and stacking timber. They move about carefully among machinery and circular Saws, and seem to calculate with great precision, the weight, position and size of the timber and logs they have to move. They lift with their tusks, grasping by a turn of their trunks over the timber. In pushing, they generally make a pad or cushion of their trunks and push against this with their tusks to prevent the ivory from chipping. An Elephant has been known to lift upon his tusks a log weighing nearly a ton; and some of them can move along logs weighing over three tons.
In height, Elephants vary 5 to 8 cubits i.e. up to 12 feet at the shoulder; and in value, from Rs. 800 to Rs. 3000 according to their strength and training. The female is not much used in timber yards as her tusks are too short to be of use in laying hold of logs and the trunk can get no purchase.
The SIN-U-ZEE, or Elephant-driver sits on the neck of the animal, and partly by his voice, but more by the touch of his feet and knees, guides the huge brute’s movements.
The Elephant never seems in a hurry, and in spite of his size, is really a very delicate creature,soon falling sick and becoming useless if not well cared for and properly fed. His food consists chiefly of Paddy i.e. undressed Rice, Sugarcane, plantains (bananas), young shoots and branches of trees, and grass.
HLWAH-TEIK-THAMA Sawyers
This is the old way of converting logs for building purposes; but steam saw-mills have displaced most of the sturdy sawyers except in districts remote from the mills, or for short inferior timber, which is hardly worth taking to the mill. The SAYAH, or Teacher is above; his TABEH, or Apprentice below.
The saws used to be of native manufacture, but Sheffield and Birmingham have now the field all to themselves. Just under the log is shown the PHEH, or key, for adjusting the teeth of the Saw, and above is the KOON-JAH, or Wedge, to give the Saw free play
Two men in a little over a day, will reduce a round log of 30 feet in length to 16 inches X 15 inches square, for Rs.4/. Working hours are from 6 A.M. to 4 P.M. A circular steam Saw would do the same work in a few minutes but not at much less cost.
Burmese Carpenter
The Burmese word for “Carpenter” is “lek-tha-ma” – handi-craftsman, and to this work Burmans take most naturally. Their forests supply enormous quantities of slendid teak, pyingdo, and pyinma for boat and house building purposes; and the profuse decorations of their religious edifices allow them to display to the fullest extent their imitative powers in carving, etc. The Boat-builders get a fine seasoned log of thin-gan or chyun, split it to the heart by means of fire and wedges; then open it out, and so make the lowest part of the hull, and upon this build the sides in the ordinary way. Hulls of 35 feet made out of a single trunk are common, but there are some as long as 60 feet. The price of a well made boat (Wohn-lay) 40 to 50 feet in length, 8 feet in the beam is Rs. 2000 to Rs. 2500, i.e. £200 to £250. The tools are of European manufacture but fitted in native fashion.
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