Lost Art Press

Ancient Bog Oak: Furniture 2,000 Years in the Making

Posted on by fitz
Staked table and lowback stick chairs in bog oak.

The following is by Andy Brownell of Brownell Furniture.

As a part-time furniture maker, I’ve been lucky enough to have two good things come my way by living in Cincinnati. I’m a 20-minute drive in one direction from Lost Art Press and in the other from M. Bohlke Corp., a Greater Cincinnati lumber and veneer business with just about every possible option for wood under one roof. This post is a mash-up of those two forces coming together and some furniture projects using a rare and very special boule of bog oak.

Introduction: Tree History & Terroir
It’s 153 B.C. and somewhere in the region of modern-day Poland, you’re standing in a mixed decidious forest. The population of the area is a mix, and possibly has some interaction with the far reaches of the Roman Empire and the Celtic people through trade, war, sex – or some combination of all three – for hundreds of years. Signs of human occupation are everywhere: agriculture; timber-framed buildings; metalwork; ceramics; woodworking; even the forest clearcutting that comes with human occupation throughout the world. As a result, wood remains a coveted resource, whether you’re a Celt or Roman. Small, unprotected villages of a few dozen people dot the landscape, and there are signs of trade.

The iron age Przeworsk culture from this region of Poland was a material-rich society of organized farmers, and was probably an amalgam of people from other parts of Europe and beyond. The oak tree (European oak) throughout the forests was as formidable then as it is now. In Celtic culture across this region it was considered sacred, being endowed with strength, endurance and longevity. 

For one European oak somewhere in the range of 150-175 years old, it’s time had come. Whether through an act of human intervention, mother nature, or from an axe blow by the Gaulish god Esus, the tree came down and was soon engulfed within a bog. It then sat ensconced within a dark, wet and silty coffin. This unique set of factors resulted in the creation of an anaerobic (low oxygen) environment, so rather than rotting and decomposing, most of its main trunk (the “first cut”) sat undisturbed in the bog for millennia.

A thumb-sized sample sent to a radiocarbon dating lab came back with an approximate age of 2,175 +/-25 years.

To make the story more interesting, I wanted to know how old this particular oak – identified as European Oak, aka Quercus robur, by M. Bohlke Corp. – was. So I sent off a small sample to a radiocarbon dating facility in Georgia. Three weeks, and $350 later, the results were in: 2,175 +/-25 years. You can see the lab facility’s report here if you want to go down the rabbit hole.

Over two millennia, the tree slowly absorbed the black ooze of the bog’s organic and inorganic matter. It filtered past the outer bark, cambium and sapwood, all the way into the heartwood of the tree. This is something akin to the process of “permineralization,” an early stage of petrification, where silicates from the soil begin to replace the organic matter of the wood. The soil’s chemistry interacts with the tannins in the oak much like they would on modern oak. But as this iron salt-rich ooze permeates the complex grain and cell structure of the European oak, the wood takes on a spectrum of color that only time can produce.

The full boule sitting at the warehouse of M. Bohlke.

Color & Material Properties
The sediment absorption and the color it leaves behind is like if you were to over-filter the same coffee beans for a shot of espresso, over and over. Each cup would get subsequently weaker and weaker in both color and taste. The log is darkest on the outside and gets lighter as you go in. Going a step further with the coffee reference to describe the color of the wood, it starts out as a charcoal-black burned espresso, has hues of an olive green matcha, then into golden crema and latte. At the heart it ends up as a weak cup of Sanka with lots of creamer served up in a flimsy foam cup. The Sanka-grade material of this boule was where much of the waste came from – and it resembled flimsy foam. It also had some white fungal-/spore-looking rot in the heartwood and in some splits that caused an allergic reaction in at least one woodworker I know. Hmm…ancient white spores released into the air causing a reaction in humans: sounds like the back story to “The Last of Us.” Mask up.

The spongy, moldy, ancient spore-riddled heart of the tree.

This color spectrum appearing on the highly figured, quarter-cut pieces of the boule produced the best-looking stuff (think tabletops and seats). Other bog oak logs can take on a charcoal/burned espresso color through most of the log. There are plenty of examples online where you can see that the really dark ones are dated up to 10,000 years old. Only the outer cant of the boule I purchased has this color throughout.  I presume this is based on the total amount of time the log stews in the bog, as well as the physical environment, etc. As far as color goes, I’d place this bog oak log in a class all by itself. There really is no comparison to any extant wood species out there. 

Flaked grain and a full color spectrum of bog oak shown finished here on the best quartered boards.

But don’t get too caught up on those coffee metaphors, because bog oak has a few extra surprises in store for the woodworker. The bog’s organic material carries a rich mix of methane and sulfur-rich compounds. So cutting with any high-speed tool releases the funk from 153 B.C.E. A bit of rotten egg, perhaps? Chris and Megan claim a hint of turtle poop, but I wouldn’t know that scent. The piquant odor takes me back to when I was a kid living in Rhode Island, mucking through the salt flats with my brother at low tide for little necks and quahogs. The smell sticks to your nose hairs and brain, like burning hair or toast.

Of the dozens of domestic and imported wood species that I’ve worked with over the years, I’d place bog oak’s scent just below fumed eucalyptus and bubinga, but riper than teak.

In the words of Vincent Price at the end of Thriller: “And rot inside a corpse’s shell/The foulest stench is in the air/The funk of forty thousand years….”

The grain and its associated workability is in most cases similar to modern-day European Oak. This is based on my experience with this log as well as some European oak from the present that I have also used for a few projects in the last few years. For my hand and power tools, including turning, I didn’t notice anything dramatically different with this bog oak compared to other oak. I did have a few pieces that when ripped to around ¼” or less were almost malleable, like Compwood, or that foam cup I mentioned earlier.

Handplane shavings of many colors.


Right Project, Right Log
Back in early 2022, I met with a prospective client, their interior decorator and the Bohlke team to look through their log inventory. The client was looking for something unique to fill the dining space of their new home, and loved the beauty and story that came along with bog oak.

The boule was about 14’ long, 35” at the base, and tapered to about 22’ at the top. Most of the 412 total board feet was cut to a generous 8/4 thick, with a few of the outer boards cut to around 5/4. This was one of a few bog oak boules available from Bohlke. While the project didn’t require the full boule, it was sold as a full boule, and I wanted to use the rest of the log for a kitchen table and chairs project later in the year.

Board selection and break-down required my full two car garage, and losing my space during the winter.

The first project I tackled was for a client’s new 116”-long dining table (extended with two “company board” leafs). I set aside about half the boule, and cherry-picked the best quartered boards with plenty of straight grain and lots of flake. 

As luck would have it, I was fortunate enough to have this entire table project filmed by a local production crew, Seven/Seventy-Nine, over the course of several months. If you’re interested, you can see the entire process here in a short video called “Small Shop.” It’s worth noting that this project, particularly the grain orientation and color selection from the tabletop, served as a proof of concept for how I would lay out a second tabletop for our kitchen.

The first project I tackled with the bog oak was this 116″ long dining table.

It’s this part of the bog oak story with which most of you might be familiar. Anything this big, old and rare often comes at a premium, so I was thrilled (as was my wife) to split up part of this boule with Christopher Schwarz. Chris has spent the last year working through his portion, making a number of different chairs. Like many followers of Lost Art Press, I became envious of how amazing those chairs looked when made from such a unique material, especially the deceptively comfortable low-backs. Seeing one in person, it was love at first sight. You want to both sit in the chair and stand up and touch the shape and details. 

Learning the Basics: Two Comb Back Chairs in Maple 
As a part-time furniture maker since 1996, I haven’t built many chairs – perhaps a dozen total. In the last few years, however, and with some encouragement from Chris and my friend and mentor Jeff Miller, I’ve really tried to get into the act. Over the last year, I’ve been learning how to make stick chairs between some of the other commission projects I’ve taken on. Like other students of the stick chair genre, this has been through a combination of LAP’s books, The Stick Chair Journal, blog posts, and some extremely helpful, in-person instruction and second opinions with Chris. My 20-minute drive to the LAP shop was particularly helpful while making my first two comb-backs out of maple. Chris talked me off the ledge and helped bail me out with a repair on an arm I split pretty badly during glue-up and assembly. It went back together with plenty of clamps and some Miller Dowels for additional mechanical bonding. I had always planned to paint the two comb backs black, so the repair is virtually invisible.

A broken arm occurred during glue up. Plenty of clamps, and reshaping, solved the problem.


Social media trolls aside, every furniture maker is their own worst critic. Looking at the two comb backs side by side, I can definitely see some of the inconsistencies and small mistakes, mainly on the rake and splay of the legs. Even with a laser to help guide my eye, I found that the most difficult part of this project was drilling straight and even holes and tapers in the seat bottoms. I found that the long shaft of the drill bit would bend and wobble slightly under pressure, and take me off track as the spade bit hogged through the maple. I’m glad I practiced on the maple before cutting into the bog oak. In the end, I applied the skills and techniques picked up while working on these two chairs, then used what I learned on four lowbacks.

My first attempt at stick chair building – far from perfect, but perfectly suitable for our home office. Plus, paint makes it all look better.

Four Low Backs
I’m a perfectionist when it comes to color and grain matching of furniture parts. But making chairs from two-millennia-old wood forces you to make some compromises in the interest of using as much of the material as possible. However, even with the noble intention of not wasting any, I’ve already sent 60+ gallons of offcuts to my neighbor’s burn pile. 

The lowback seats and backrests are the two primary areas that the eye goes to on these chairs, so my type-A tendencies really kicked in during this phase of the project. On the seats it was relatively easy to get a good match of grain and color, even with the high contrasts in the bog oak. These were all cut from sequential pieces of 8/4, and gave me some really smoky edges that showed off the dark rich grain from front to back, especially after being carved out.

The challenging part of grain selection with a highly contrasting wood like bog oak is most evident in creating the parts for the back rest.

I also made a three-piece arm, modeled after the version in The Stick Chair Journal No. 1, rather than a two-piece lower section, as described in “The Stick Chair Book” plans. This dramatically reduced the amount of waste for this part, and allowed me to resaw the 8/4 to make perfectly symmetrical bookmatched arms for each chair. 

The backrest presented an interesting challenge, however, because the radius cuts a generous curve into the two segments that are glued up to form the back section. I went into the layout with good intentions, picking the darkest parts of the tree. But after cutting out all four backrests, I ended up with three highly varied degrees of grain and color matching. Not perfect, but I ended up justifying the result by claiming that each one has its own personality – from “creamy” to “burned.” I guess I’ll assign those to my dinner guests corresponding to their own personalities. The lesson here is don’t try to get too fancy with the back rests, and pick the most consistent color and grain possible.

Four lowback stick chairs in bog oak, arranged in order of light to dark.

Staked Table on Steroids
Having made six stick chairs at this point, I wanted to apply some of the new techniques I learned to the table. I also wanted to have the chairs and table look like they were intentionally designed as a set. I love round tabletops, but don’t get many commission requests for that shape. Also, our kitchen remodel had an open floor plan, so I decided on a round top that would take up less room and make the flow from one room to the next more subtle. 

The six-piece top measures 60” x 1-1/2″ thick; it came from three sequentially matched boards closest to the center of the log (for the most ray flake). I cut them in half lengthwise then arranged in a bookmatched orientation similar to the arrangement on the first dining tabletop.

Shaping a large tabletop by hand had a Sisyphean feel.

The legs are made from two laminated pieces of 1-3/4” x 3-1/2″ stock, which gave me 3-1/2” square blanks to work from. For the table legs, I opted for hexagonal legs, which gave me more visual mass from less material than the octagonal legs on the chairs. The points of the hexagon help hide the lamination lines and, after cutting the blanks, I struggled to identify where the two pieces were joined.

I took time to dial in the color and grain match for the two-piece laminated leg blanks.

After cutting the hexagonal blanks on the table saw (see The Stick Chair Journal No.1 on cutting hexagonal legs from rectangular blanks), I marked the centers on each end to lay out the tenons. Next, I turned 1-3/4”-diameter x 3-1/2”-long tenons, including a quarterround cove to mark the shoulder transition. This was essentially the same process as turning the parts on the chairs, only scaled up. Later, I also used the band saw to cut slightly thicker kerfs on the tenons in order to accommodate for the beefy wedges during glue-up. Finally, I tapered the legs on the jointer – much like how they were tapered on the chair legs, there’s just more material to remove. So by marking layout lines on the facets for the tapers, and adjusting my jointer’s fence to 30°, I was able to sneak up on the line with multiple passes. (image)

The legs with tenons, flats and coves at the transition point.

The low-profile underside of the table is made from four, 6”-wide x 1-3/4”-thick boards reinforced with solid corner blocks that accommodate for the large mortise-and-tenon joinery of the legs. The table legs have an 8° splay from the corners along the 45° axis, with ends that sit far enough in from the table edge for the chairs to be pushed in most of the way under the top. I drilled these out on my drill press with a beefy 1-¾” Forstner bit (with threaded tip, and a rudimentary 8° plywood sled to help hold the frame rails in place during drilling. (image)

I drilled the mortises at the drill press.


The other modification I made to the leg assembly was the addition of a wide, flat shoulder around the mortises to allow for the most contact possible between the shoulder of the leg and base. (image) I figured this would give the sub-assembly the best possible mechanical connection to support the weight of the tabletop. I did this by making a rudimentary router template, sloped at 8°, and used a straight bit with a bushing to make a clean, consistent cut. The flat contact between the legs and base, along with some wedges, made the glue-up and assembly go smoothly. (image) 

Both the legs and table base have flat points of contact.

Leveling the table base and cutting the legs was exactly the same process as the stick chairs, minus the slope in the seat.

Finish & Final Photos
For the chairs, I used two coats of Katherine’s Soft Wax 2.0. Having seen in person what this finish looked like on some of Chris’ bog oak chairs, it was an easy decision to make. For the table I needed something a bit more durable and something I’ve had consistent results with in the past. So I applied three coats of Minwax oil-based wipe-on polyurethane (satin finish), then took the sheen down after the finish was cured with a fine grey Scotch-Brite pad. I know some people will give me crap about applying a “plastic” finish to this ancient wood, but it’s what I like and it is easy to apply by hand in my small shop. For my tables, I prefer to not sweat it over a dinner guest’s sweaty glass, spilled food or hot plate. You’re free to use whatever finish you choose on your own table made from 2,000-year-old wood. (Click here to see a video of the table and chairs.)

‘It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.’
I think the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote above best summarizes my experience. And while I still have about 75bf of bog oak remaining, the many branches my journey has taken with this wood have been the best parts. I was incredibly fortunate to be able to work with ancient and rare material. This included a commission project from the start that was big enough and a client willing to use bog oak, and a local supplier where I could get the material in the first place. I went down the history/science rabbit hole of bog oak, so I learned lots of interesting new facts. With the addition of the radio-carbon dating to the story, it added some authenticity to the unique nature of these pieces. I added new skills to my woodworking repertoire, with plenty of mistakes along the way. But I got in my reps, and improved my technique across six chairs and two table projects – not to mention these builds provided a good excuse to buy some new handy tools. Sharing this experience with the Lost Art Press team reconnected me with old friends right in my own backyard. Throughout the entire journey, I’ve documented the process in photos, video and now in the written form. As a professional creative and content producer, this work makes me better at my full-time job. (Remember, woodworking is my side hustle. My full-time job is with the OneSight EssilorLuxottica Foundation.) Building these pieces has enriched my life as a creative and storyteller. It fed my natural curiosity of ongoing learning as a furniture maker and lifelong student of nature, history and science. 

– Andy Brownell, July 2023

LAP Open Wire, July 22, 2023 (Me, Again)

Posted on by Lost Art Press
Two comb-backs in red elm on my workbench this morning.

I’m back in Covington after a two-week trip to Scandinavia. So after a couple weeks of guest hosts at the Open Wire (thanks, Monroe and Joel), I’m here today to answer your questions about woodworking or stuff that is going on at Lost Art Press.

Warning: My head is full of cheese. I arrived in America with a bad head cold and an unusual case of Traveling West Jetlag. So I might be a little slow on the uptake

Despite all that, I am happy to be home and back at the LAP HQ. 

Here’s how it works: Type your question in the comment field. I will attempt to answer it. It is that simple.

So here we go…. Note that comments for this entry will close about 5 p.m. Eastern. 

— Christopher Schwarz

‘Cadi’ Makes Her Film Debut

Posted on by Kara Uhl

About a month ago, I wrote about Martyn Owen, a filmmaker who was creating a mini-documentary about Nannau Hall, the Grade II* Georgian house that stands on the grounds where the Nannau Oak, featured in “Cadi & the Cursed Oak,” once stood.

“Within the Walls: Nannau,” directed and edited by Martyn I. Owen and performed by Keith Evans, is done and you can watch it in full at the link. The film shows Nannau, in its current state, in desperate need of repair. Thanks to many incredible shots by drone operator Rob Whittey, you’re also able to get a real sense of Nannau and its surroundings, including places featured in “Cadi,” such as a lovely aerial shot of Dolgellau and close-ups of more distinct locations such as Coed y Moch lodge. The film also delves into more of the history and folklore of Nannau, exploring eerie and ghostly tales that live on to this day.  

Enjoy!

— Kara Gebhart Uhl

Safety is More Important than ‘Likes’

Posted on by fitz
The spinning carbide took a chunk out of the metal jointer guard when it fell on the blades – now imagine the mess those blades can make of flesh. Or rather don’t – it’s not pretty.

The following is by Steve Latta. Steve makes contemporary and traditional furniture, and teaches woodworking at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology and Millersville University in Lancaster County, Pa. He’s a contributing editor to Fine Woodworking magazine, and is working on a project for Lost Art Press. His Instagram is @steve_latta_woodworking.

About 30 years ago, I took a turning class from the late Rude Osolnik in Akron, Ohio. At that time, Rude was teaching at Berea College and was a master at his craft. It was my first turning class and I had never chucked anything on a lathe prior to it. As Rude was prepping for a demo on spindle turning, he pushed the blank into the tail stock and with the lathe running, he slowly engaged the drive center. With a little finesse of tightening and loosening the stock as it spun, he ended up with the blank humming nicely.

Feeling confident with what I’d observed, I went back to my station, attempted the same technique on the Powermatic #90 assigned to me and promptly launched my blank, leaving a divot in the ceiling. While rubbing the emerging bruise on my hand (not to mention on my ego), a classmate doing his best to suppress a laugh explained that Rude does it that way because he’s been doing it for 40 years. He recommended that I load my blank with the lathe turned off. Despite my stupidity, I survived the self-inflicted forces of natural selection.

That same experience occurred when I started teaching woodworking at a technical college in Lancaster, Penn. I had 16 years in the trade and was a pretty decent cabinetmaker at that point. I even considered myself a “safe” cabinetmaker – until I observed my bright-eyed and bushy-tailed students doing things on the table saw that made me turn white with fear. When asked “Where in the hell did you learn that!?”, the answer was more often than not, “From watching you.” Ouch! That hurt, but it impressed upon me the urgency and necessity of starting with the basics and the essential safe practices for operating a tool, whatever it is.

I love my students. I love their raw energy. Most are between 18 and 25 years of age, male, driven by hormones and with a brain that is far from fully developed. That is not a criticism, just a fact. Their typical solution to most problems is to push it or hit it harder. They do not fully grasp the consequences of a bad choice. They don’t know what the tools really do and certainly do not yet how to use them properly. At that age, most have yet to learn that they themselves are breakable.

Mishaps with hand and power tools can change a life or end a career in a millisecond. Back in the early ’80s, a fellow apprentice was ripping wide, heavy boards on a table saw while wearing gloves. In a blink of the eye, there were four leather fingers resting on the table detached from the glove. They weren’t empty and his career in woodworking was done. Over my 40 years in the trade, I have picked up, scraped up or cleaned up more human tissue than one should. The most recent incident involved small chunks of bone and flesh from the dust chute on a jointer. And, yes, it was gross.

“Bandosawrus” (used with permission of Chris Vesper, Vesper Tools).

Some folks name their tools. An acquaintance of mine named his 36” bandsaw “Bandosawrus” because of its size and power. I know of a 9-horsepower shaper named “Shredder.” I do not know of any named “Daisy.” Despite that sense of attachment we can get to our tools, I guarantee the emotional bond is strictly one way. There is not a part of my body, any part, that will make the power tools in my shop bog down even a single rpm. The edge of a sharp chisel will pay no mind to the calluses on my hands. The destruction these tools can cause to a body happens in an instance without love nor malice. Although it is easy to blame the tool, “operator error” is often the real problem expressing itself as a lack of diligence or understanding.

These days I often bristle watching videos of various woodworking operations on Instagram or YouTube. I recall a well-known internet personality demonstrate how he cut the dovetailed slot on the bottom of the column for a three-leg pedestal table. Using a shaper with an industrial-size dovetail bit, he ran the first pass right down the center of the mortise, requiring an additional pass on each side of the first to obtain the proper width. He did not show the second cut but skipped to the final pass furthest from the fence. He finished his video sliding the dovetailed foot easily into the column. He was smiling ear-to-ear. I am quite certain that anyone who attempted what had been demonstrated did not smile. The omitted second cut was a climb cut, and a particularly dangerous one at that. I suspect the author discovered that little nightmare making his video. I also suspect that is why he left it out.

Sometimes the videographer even states, “this one will drive the safety police nuts!” In our “rugged sense of individualism” culture, we admire those who break the rules. But sometimes the outcome is ugly. If something isn’t safe, don’t post it. Take a look at your motives for making the video. Is the purpose to relay solid information or rather, out of vanity flavored with ignorance, say “Look at me. Look at me.” Does the number of “likes” and “followers” trump basic safety? Sure, it is possible to turn a short spindle on a table saw combined with a drill. The fact that it’s possible and may even look “cool” garnering thousands of hits does not make it a valid technique and certainly not a safe one. Just because something can be done doesn’t mean that it should be. In my mind, promoting such practices is a crime.

Deviating from accepted safety norms should only come after mastery. Stepping out of what is considered safe should be a conscious choice based on years of experience with a full understanding of what the negative consequences may be. The undefined nuances of what a tradesperson knows are rarely expressed in articles or videos. The subtleties are so ingrained that they are unwittingly taken for granted and hence are inaccessible to the observer. A certain technique might work 99 times out of 100 but the one time it doesn’t might be a bloodbath, literally. In this trade, we are not working with knitting needles but an endless assortment of sharp objects, some of them moving at incredible speeds. Out of respect and concern for viewers in our online ventures, safety rather than sensationalism, should be gold standard, not the number of likes.

– Steve Latta

Editor’s note: If you do get hurt (we sure hope you don’t), make sure you have a well-stocked first-aid kit at hand, and that you know how to use it. And that you know when to seek professional help. Reading “Workshop Wound Care,” by Dr. Jeffery Hill, is a good first step.

Why Collect Stuff?

Posted on by fitz
These are some of the tools of the joiner shown in “Spons’ Mechanics’ Own Book” (1885).

The following is excerpted from Joel Moskowitz’s history of trades and explication of trades in England at the time “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” was originally published (the full chapter is titled “England in 1839). The Lost Art Press edition of the book include not only the original text, but Joel’s fascinating chapter as well as how-to chapters by Christopher Schwarz on the construction of the three projects described in the original text: a Packing Box, a dovetailed Schoolbox and a Chest of Drawers – using hand tools.

Why collect stuff? Is there something in one’s DNA that suggests that picking up an extra thing or two just to have them is a good idea? Before you know it, you are sitting around with a lot of things that seem kind of similar: a collection. The game ends for some collectors right there, and for others it prompts more questions about what they’ve collected and what other items would make the collection perfect.

When I began studying woodworking formally in the 1980s, there were few new tools worth buying. Fortunately, my teacher, Maurice Fraser, taught us how to buy old tools that worked. I soon bought my first old tool, a Stanley Bedrock 604C, then some more stuff, and more stuff after that. At some point I realized that if I continued making rationalizations about the tools I was buying (that I needed all of them to do woodworking; if my 32 other smooth planes were to be destroyed in a fire, I’d be comforted to know that I had number 33 waiting in the wings), I would have to sharpen all the tools I bought. On the other hand, if I relaxed and admitted I was a collector, it would save a lot of work.

So that’s what I did. In the process, I joined a lot of interesting organizations (EAIA, MWTCA, TATHS, CRAFTS and others) and found an outlet for my continuing interest in social history. I had never been much interested in who had been king when whichever side had won the Indo-Franco-Prussian-Franco wars, but I was interested in things such as why the heck anyone in their right mind in 1790 would spend a king’s ransom on a miter plane when a good smoother could plane just as well. So like many tool collectors, I started studying up on tools and industrial history, and in the process I bought a lot of books.

At some point I ran out of interesting tools to buy. I just couldn’t afford what I wanted to collect. But books were cheap, so I continued to buy interesting books on tools, woodworking and industry in general. When I started collecting in the period before 1880, I hit a snag. There just isn’t all that much to collect from that period. Woodworkers as a group are not nearly as interested in writing stuff down as, say, theologians, politicians or poets. I collected the same pre-1880 material that other collectors did, and frankly most of it was turgid and just not all that interesting to read. Much to my pleasure, “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” was different.

A lot of people have asked me how I found this book. The answer is: I didn’t. It found me.
Here’s the secret to collecting a lot of stuff: If it’s cheap enough and you don’t have it, you buy it. I picked up tons of material that way. Most of it is just fun to have. Sometimes you actually learn something about woodworking in the book. Sometimes, as in this case, you acquire the book, poke through a few pages and shout “Eureka!” when you realize what a monumental find you have. And that is exactly what this book is.

After a few reads of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker,” it became apparent that inside the text were the earliest descriptions of certain woodworking practices that answered a lot of questions we have today, and it put to rest some modern speculation.

Various editions of the book from the left: 1839 Knight edition, leather-bound Knight edition of several volumes in the series, 1883 Houlston edition, 1841 Houlston edition.

I started buying up other copies of the book to get a handle on how various editions differed. At some point, I called Christopher Schwarz and asked if he was interested in reading what I now considered to be the most important pre-1850 book on teaching woodworking. I sent him a copy of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” and he, like me, was charmed. We both thought this book needed to see the light of day once more. Chris wanted to build the projects and give the book relevance to beginners today. I was especially interested in its historical context and what it tells us about shop practice in the early 19th century.

Historical Context
The earliest book on woodworking in English that tells us about basic technique is Joseph Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises,” which was published from 1677-1680 by subscription in an edition of 500 copies. Its audience was educated gentlemen who wanted to learn a little about how things are done. Men such as the noted diarist Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), who was a subscriber. “Mechanick Exercises” is pretty spotty and contains no real sense of what needs to be learned in a training course. It’s more a summary of common woodworking operations. This in itself is interesting, and readers today could certainly learn much from a social and historical standpoint, but the book doesn’t tell us anything about training a tradesman.

A century later (1769-1774), a Frenchman named André Roubo wrote a giant tome, “L’Art du Menuisier,” on all aspects of advanced woodworking just before the French Revolution got rid of a lot of the luxury styles he describes. This book is also a wonderful addition to our knowledge of 18th-century French woodworking, but Roubo concentrates on advanced subjects; it isn’t a beginner’s course. In England and the United States, the only books on woodworking during this period are “builder’s dictionaries,” “pattern books” and “price books.”

Builder’s dictionaries are glossaries of woodworking and architectural terms that include some basic information on how much things cost, and in most cases, formulas and tables for calculating materials and dimensions. The main purpose of these books was to allow rich patrons to figure out what the joiner meant when he said, “I’ll need a crown to purchase the deals I need to make the barn siding, my lord.”

Pattern books, which are collections of drawings, were sold to designers and masters who wanted to show potential customers the latest styles. The most important of these pattern books was Thomas Chippendale’s “Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director” (1754). Pattern books don’t show much furniture anatomy, which would have been familiar to any skilled craftsman, but they show endless design variations that you could show a client.

Another type of book that appeared in this period is the price book, which explained to union and craft society members how much they should be paid for different kinds of woodwork. Price books usually are tied to a region, with London price books being the most common. But price books crop up in all the important cities, even in the United States – pretty much anywhere there was enough work for a journeyman working in a shop for wages. As the industry grew, labor relations became more complicated and societies of trades, or unions, began to form in the 18th century. Small shops could of course get away with paying what they wanted to, but larger shops followed the price books. Price books served as a last vestige of the medieval guild system, which regulated pay, among other functions.

In the 18th century, all books were still hand printed, with hand-set type on hand-laid paper. Books were expensive, so the shortage of popular, practical books for woodworking apprentices is understandable. “Mechanick Exercises” was far too expensive for a poor apprentice to afford. Of the few professional how-to books that exist from the early 18th century in English, one of the more noteworthy is “The Complete English Tradesman,” which was published in 1703 by none other than Daniel Defoe of “Robinson Crusoe” fame. The book is a guide to running a millinery shop. So there was a demand for “how to” books, but the hand-printed nature of the book would have kept circulation from all but the fairly well-off milliner.

I have a reference book from 1777 for ironmongers, “Mr. Hoppus’s Measurer.” It’s carefully inscribed, “George Barter His Book June 3, 1787.” The inscription suggests this was a treasured book that was purchased used 10 years after it was published. If a new, up-to-date copy could be afforded, certainly a used copy would not be so prized. Even if there had been a demand for an apprentice’s guide, the book would have been too expensive for apprentices to buy, and certainly many would think that there was no point in paying for a book about something you did every day anyway.

Technical books of all sorts began to appear in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a booming industrial economy started to change everything. In general, the books addressed the cutting edge of technology, not basic skills. The audience for books on wood was comprised of professional builders and woodworkers who already knew all the basics. They were not interested in directions for cutting dovetails; that, they learned to do in their sleep during their apprenticeship. What they wanted were books on the finer points of their craft. Probably the most famous book in this class was Peter Nicholson’s “The New and Improved Practical Builder” (1809).

Nicholson wrote a whole series of books on various aspects of carpentry and construction. His books are the best-known of the early 19th-century books on woodworking, especially those on advanced architectural work. Nicholson explained the math and layout for all sorts of woodwork structures. While they are totally useless as training exercises, they are great books on applied geometry. They offer an engraving of the tools of the joiner and lots of information on layout and design, but almost nothing on how to use the tools. These books are different than the really limited-run volumes such as Roubo. Some of them were reprinted continuously for most of the 19th century. While all of these books are fascinating today to historians, and they tell us a lot about the practice of woodworking, there is almost nothing on basic technique from the period. But this is what we all want: A book that shows us and teaches us the lessons of apprentices from before the machine age.

A list of the topics covered in “The Guide to Service” and “The Guide to Trade” series from 1845.

By the early 19th century, steam-powered printing presses and machine-made paper made daily newspapers ubiquitous for the masses. Reading became a fundamental skill, and books, while still expensive, became affordable to the middle class. When first published in 1839 by Charles Knight and Co. “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” was part of a series called “The Guide to Trade.” A few years later the series was re-titled “The Industrial Library” and was published variously under the “Houlston & Wright,” “Houlston & Stone,” and later just “Houlston” imprints. “Industrial” in this sense means hard working, not jobs in manufacturing.

Few of these books are preserved in research libraries around the world. These were titles for the masses, not for scholars. And unless a library was specifically collecting popular literature (which they mostly weren’t), there would be no reason to acquire these books.

The goal of the “The Guide to Trade” series and its companion series, “The Guide to Service” series, was ambitious. It appeared to be a comprehensive group of nearly 100 books, printed as inexpensively as possible to serve as a overview of all sorts of vocations “to prepare young persons for the choice of an occupation.” Of all the books listed in the original series, only a few are marked as available. And the series was obviously not successful for Knight because only two years later, in 1841, the list was greatly pruned and was printed under the “Houlston” imprint. Thirty-six books made it into this new series now titled “The Industrial Library,” which was announced in a full-page advertisement in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.” By the time of the 1883 edition, 44 years later, the advertisement for the series has been reduced to a fraction of a page, and it competes with a bunch of other self-improvement series. There’s a lot to be learned about how England changed during the time this series ran. Of the 36 original titles of 1841, no less than seven deal with traditional agricultural jobs, and nine deal with domestic jobs.

In 1841, the series was greatly pruned and was printed under the “Houlston” imprint. Thirty-six books made it into this new series now titled “The Industrial Library,” which was announced in this full-page advertisement at the back of the book.

By the time of the 1883 edition, the advertisement for the series has been reduced to a fraction of a page, and it competes with a bunch of other self-improvement series and maps.

The prices of the books are largely the same, reflecting massive changes in book publishing. What is most interesting is the change in titles. The series numbering now has gaps, as only 20 books remain. The books that have been removed are almost all agricultural. I was able to locate only one agricultural title in a library, anywhere. Agricultural workers would have been the poorest and least literate of all the trades in the series, so it makes sense that they didn’t buy these books. But the deletions are also a testimony to the shift from a rural economy to a predominantly urban one.

The craft books that have vanished include “The Dressmaker and Milliner,” “The Tailor” and “The Shoemaker.” These are all trades that changed from real crafts in the early 19th century to brutal industrial manufacturing jobs by the latter half of the century; they didn’t require much training (except on the very high end) and certainly were not desirable jobs in the public imagination.

Two other new titles have been added: “The Butler” and “The Footman,” which are both domestic jobs. The large number of titles about domestic employment might be an indication of employers trying to train their hires, or it’s evidence of a rising middle class that hired domestic workers to emulate richer household practices. In addition, books such as these might help a young person get a domestic position – jobs that were hard to get and considered pretty good.

While both lists have “Clerk” and “Banker’s Clerk” on them, jobs that I would suppose are fairly prestigious, it’s interesting to see the titles (which I also could not locate copies of) intermixed with all these titles for domestic jobs. The urban office world, with its shift to “white collar” work, still hadn’t taken place on any great scale. That was a 20th-century innovation.

Some of the books in the series are credited to various authors but “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” is not. This isn’t unusual for the time, but it is a shame that we don’t know more about who wrote it.

Of all the “Industrial Library” books that I’ve been able to locate, only “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” is told in the form of a story. (The book on the housemaid has a limited narration.) The other books seem to be early attempts at writing how-to books, with limited success in condensing a complicated trade to a hundred or so pages. Various editions of “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” have turned up, but it is not known if the book was continually available from its first publication in 1839 to the last in 1883, from which this facsimile was taken. The later edition was made from the same plates as the 1839 edition and is identical. An addendum about new modern tools was added to this later edition. It’s included here, but it’s not really worth much. We chose to scan the later edition of the book because it’s visually the same as the earlier edition but its binding was in better shape than the other copies in my collection.

The books themselves are a microcosm of invention, a window in how book publishing changed during the 19th century. (For more information about the books themselves, and the book technologies used in printing these books, see “Contextualizing ‘The Joiner and Cabinet Maker’” by Jeff Peachy, a noted bookbinder and book conservator, at the back of this book.) What is a shame, of course, is that the original Knight series was never completed. How wonderful would it be to have a copy of “Cutler” or “Watchmaker” today.