Portret van een van twee Indische timmerlieden. From rijksmuseum.nl
We now accept PayPal for all orders placed through the Lost Art Press store – that’s in addition to Visa, Mastercard and American Express. So if you’ve been hoarding money in a PayPal account, we have another way for you to spend it.
If you are an international customer who wants to purchase a download, you can now do that directly through our store. Our store accepts international credit cards (and PayPal) for downloadable items. Your download will be delivered immediately and with all the regular security enjoyed by domestic customers.
Yes, we are still working on shipping all items internationally. We’ll be taking a big step forward to that goal this week.
Also, we ship the deluxe version of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” everywhere in the world. For information on shipping and pricing, send an e-mail to John Hoffman at john@lostartpress.com. We now have custom boxes for the deluxe edition that make it a snap to ship this massive tome without damage.
Suzanne “Saucy Indexer” Ellison was digging around in the digital archives of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and turned up some fantastic images you might enjoy exploring.
The Rijksmuseum provides high-resolution images freely to anyone who creates an account and encourages users to use the images to make T-shirts or some other art form. It’s a surprisingly refreshing approach compared to the locked doors of other museums.
Some notable details: The workbench has angled legs with only two stretchers. It’s a bit like a modified Roman workbench. I cannot see any vises, but the benchtop is obscured by the subject and his tools. I think it’s clear the benchtop is 38” from the ground, however.
At the carpenter’s feet are more tools: the curious Dutch sabre saw, a hammer with a nice handle and a cross pane, a plane, a box of nails and some other stuff that’s unclear to me.
Flight to Egypt and Joseph as a Carpenter, Wheelwright and Cooper The second image is a lot like the famous Stent panel in that it was created by someone who was a woodworker, so the details are likely to be more accurate than a drawing or painting.
This panel, circa 1600-1699, has lots to see. In the top left, Joseph is shown at a bench that is almost identical in structure to the first plate in this blog entry. Again, no vises are evident, nor is a planing stop (though there has to be something there). Again, a 38”-high workbench.
Behind him are tools: a bowsaw, bench planes, compass, rabbeting or moulding planes, a brace, miter template, perhaps a second template and a rack of chisels.
Love the hat.
In the carpentry scene below, Joseph has a try square, a level, mallet and a chisel.
In the wheelwright scene and cooperage scenes on the right we get to see a drawknife make an appearance in both.
In the center of the panel we have Joseph holding his basket of tools with his sabre saw over his shoulder.
From The Four Times of Day, John Saenredam, Cornelius Schonaeus, 1675 – 1607 This engraving shows a carpenter crosscutting a board with a sabre saw while he kneels on a a beam. Behind him a woodworker planes what looks like the top of a table (I think that’s a drawer below).
Oh, and that’s Apollo on the cloud.
New Year Postcard from the carpenter’s guild in Haarlem, circa 1600 This image is one I’ve been studying for some time after Jeff Burks first pointed it out to me. It pictures Joseph in his workshop at a 38”-high workbench that clearly is built in the Roman style. And it has what looks like planing stops.
At Joseph’s feet is a sabre saw and a bowsaw. Plus the baby Jesus striking a chalk line with the help of a cherub.
I’ve been studying this plate (and a bunch of others) as a way of sorting out the culture of tool storage – who uses racks, who uses chests etc. That’s a topic for another day.
Suzanne sent me links to many more images, but I have to get my butt into the shop. I’ve got blind dovetails to cut and pine to process for a demonstration next weekend in Alabama.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. All the stuff above about 38″-high workbenches is just a joke to amuse myself. Ignore it.
With “Campaign Furniture” now at the printer, John Hoffman and I had a chance to catch our breath this month before we launch into another busy season of product development, including Peter Galbert’s chairmaking book.
After taking inventory, we have 64 deluxe versions of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry.” I know we will sell them all, especially when the second book on furniture comes out. So this isn’t some crass ploy. If we were unscrupulous, we’d just sell them on eBay when the second book came out.
This entry is, instead, about me making peace with the project. A project of this scale will make you hate the project on an equivalent scale. That happens when making furniture or books.
Lately, I’ve been taking my deluxe book down to the shop to read it. The workbench is the best place to do that because the book is so huge. (I really need to build a bookstand for my personal copy this year, though the binding is incredibly tough and flexible.)
As I’ve been reading this book with fresh eyes, I have concluded that it is mistitled. It’s not about marquetry – that’s only a small part of it. It’s about seeing your own work through 18th-century eyes. Just like our century, the 18th century was filled with craftsmen who did shoddy work, stuff that was glued together without real joinery or regard for wood movement.
The fight, according to Roubo, is to be the better craftsman. To do the good work even if it does not pay. To refuse to sink to the level of the furniture-selling middleman, or the customer who values price over everything else.
If you take this high road, you’ll take your lumps. Roubo did. But your furniture won’t fall apart when the humidity or the whims of style change.
And maybe, avec bon chance, you will make something that endures like “l’Art du menuisier.”
Anyone who has read “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” knows I have an aversion to the idea of locks. I don’t like to lock anything.
But even odder is that I love the locking mechanisms themselves.
So when I set out to build the projects for “Campaign Furniture,” I purchased some animal-shaped locks from India to photograph and use as motifs throughout the text. I ordered all my locks from a seller on eBay called Indian Antique Showroom.
The locks are charming, well-made and shipped from India. Mine all came extraordinarily packed in hand-lettered boxes. The seller is very fast and easy to deal with. I cannot say if the locks really are antiques or not, but I don’t really care about that.
What I like about the locks is they are more like puzzles than locks. If you have half a brain you can defeat the lock in a minute or two.
If you are planning on building a campaign trunk this year, check out the locks at Indian Antique Showroom. Dig deep. There are lots of locks there at varying prices. And check back if you don’t find one you like. They refresh their stock on a regular basis.
I often wonder what the result would be if young children were able to take pen and ink and write down their ideas of life. What a charming book it would make, but how sadly visionary and unreal the terrestrial paradise it would describe.
Of course, there would be no lack of money, and I suppose the lords and ladies would not be too proud to eat plum cake and gingerbread, and there would be no end of lollipops and apples, to say nothing of toys and other necessaries of life. As to books, I am afraid there would not be a very large supply, but the standard works would be “Jack the Giant Killer,” “Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” and “ Alice in Wonderland;” and no doubt reading and writing would be natural accomplishments that would come as a matter of course like the first teeth. (more…)
