Free domestic shipping for “Campaign Furniture” ends at midnight tonight, April 5. After that, shipping and handling will be $8.
Eight dollars is a lot of money (though not as much as $300). That $8 could be a six pack of snooty beer. Or a 12 pack of stuff that has already been through the hobo once.
Save your $8 here.
— Christopher Schwarz
A Russian architect who is traveling in this country to study American building methods was greatly interested in the elevator which he saw used for raising brick in the construction of a great apartment-house. He even photographed the device, in order that he might have visual evidence of it to show on his return home. In his country no other method of hoisting brick is in use than the primitive one of carrying them aloft on the shoulders of men.
Such incidents are of common occurrence. Many of the labor-saving devices in use in America are unknown elsewhere. Our own countrymen traveling in Europe, and more especially in Asia, are astonished at the slow and toilsome methods there employed.
A failure to make use of labor-saving contrivances is not always due to lack of enterprise. Many of the inventions most useful to us “would not pay” where labor is cheap. Efforts to introduce the trolley-car for passenger and freight traffic in the West Indies encountered an obstacle which the American promoters had not foreseen.
The ten cents for which the company would carry a package five miles or more—a rate that would insure generous support here—did not seem small there, for the simple reason that many a native could find no easier way to earn ten cents than by walking the five miles and carrying the package on his head.
If “a workman is known by his chips,” he is also known by his tools. High-priced men do their work with high-priced machinery. The engineer of the mammoth locomotive which is pulling hundreds of people across country in a fast express-train is well paid; the poor Oriental, dragging his single passenger in a jinrikisha, gets barely enough for his support.
Not only does the high-priced worker create the necessity for mechanical improvements, but the mechanical improvements in turn augment productiveness. The lesson, then, for nations and for individuals is to make themselves worthy of good tools. Human muscles were made for something better than the work which a few lumps of coal under a boiler will do more easily.
The Youth’s Companion – July 26, 1900
—Jeff Burks
Dial Planes are of two Sorts; firſt ſuch as are made on the Wall of a Building; or ſecondly, ſuch as are drawn on the Tables of Wood, vulgarly called Dial-Boards.
The firſt Sort, if they are made of Brick-Work, is done by plaistering on the Wall with Lime, Sand and Hair, mixed; this muſt be well drenched with Linſeed Oil, after it is dry, i.e. as long as it will drink any, and then painted with Oil and White-Lead, that it may be durable.
But a better way is to temper the Lime, Sand and Hair with Ox Blood, which will be no great Charge, but of great Advantage; for this Mixture will equal in Time the hardneſs of a Free-Stone, and keep the Surface as free from Injuries of Weather; but you muſt afterwards paint it white. The following Method is ſtill preferable.
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Several of my friends and colleagues have been surprised by how well our new book, “Campaign Furniture,” has been selling.
“That’s amazing,” they say, “for a style of furniture that is so ____________ .” Fill in the blank with any word that is a synonym for “obscure.”
The truth is that campaign furniture has been obscure only in the realm of furniture-makers. Everytime I go to an antique mall, I find at least one piece of campaign-style furniture (whether the seller actually realizes it or not). Plus, I can always find reproductions at used furniture stores. And 1stdibs.com is awash in the stuff.
The British campaign style is generally assumed to have been popular during 1740 to 1940, when the British Empire owned a huge chunk of the globe. That’s a huge run for any furniture style. American Arts & Crafts furniture, by way of comparison, had a much shorter run. About 50 years.
Shaker furniture has a similar timeline to that of campaign furniture. However, it is my educated guess that there are far more pieces of campaign furniture out there than Shaker furniture. This is not to say that the styles are “equal,” whatever that means. But that campaign-style stuff is anything but obscure.
In fact, many times campaign pieces are stealthily hiding as non-campaign pieces. Simon and Sean Clarke at Christopher Clarke Antiques Ltd. had many stories for us about how they encountered chairs, Davenports and tables that were knock-down campaign pieces, but the owners had no idea that their pieces could be taken to pieces.
Now, truth be told, I am also surprised by how well the “Campaign Furniture” book is selling. But not because the style is obscure, but because the book is about a style of furniture. All books about a furniture style are doomed to sell worse than books about birdhouses.
But I was heartened – nay, almost Unicorn-fartin’-a-rainbow ecstatic – by Joel Moskowitz’s assessment of the book: “(O)ne of the most important books on woodworking to appear in the last generation.” Joel is a tough customer.
— Christopher Schwarz
If you don’t read my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine, you might want to check out this article I posted there this morning. Git yer polissoirs.
— Christopher Schwarz
