Lost Art Press

A Trestle Festival

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The author Titus Livius (or the translator Pierre Bersuire) at work, Ab urbe condita (BNF Fr. 273, fol. 7), c. 1475

Leave it to Jeff Burks to turn up a bunch of images of early trestle tables that I haven’t seen before.

As you’ll see from the gallery below, these trestle tables are of the old variety – two independent horses that are topped by a large board, suitable for carving up your meal (or your unliked saint).

Most of the horses have three legs, though there are some that have interesting feet that are flat on the floor. Also interesting is how many trestles have decorative panels between the legs.

One warning before you start browsing these images: A few are a bit on the graphic side. If you ever wondered about why these tables were covered by tablecloths when people ate at them, this set of images should help you answer that question.

As always, thanks to Jeff Burks for the original source material here. His research and publishing here speeds our efforts at Lost Art Press.

— Christopher Schwarz

Sawyers

Posted on by fitz

gruubenvorst den beijer

He is employed by the Carpenter, the Cabinet-maker, and the Cooper, to cut wood into the required boards, planks, and battens, for their respective operations. This he performs by placing the tree or timber, on strong tressels, usually laid across the sawpit; and being assisted by the Pitman, whilst the Top Sawyer, or chief, stands upon the work, they conjointly work a long coarse saw along the line marked out for the cut.

Their earnings vary extremely, unless constantly employed, in a covered yard during winter, by the Cooper, at a weekly salary, usually amounting to 35s. Oftener, however, they choose to depend upon jobbing about for different masters “upon the call;” at which sort of game, they either find “nothing stirring,” and literally starve awhile, or make such astonishing sums at piece work, as to set their heads a madding with the fumes of the stomach; they become broilsome, drink unaccountably, fight any body or thing, pawn their tools by scores, and, when Tuesday comes round, find themselves under the necessity of kicking the master, for an advance.

On these occasions, the masters who have work in hand, supplicate the men to resume the job, and thus become the beggars; which they may do in vain, if they have suffered the ungrateful wretches to run in debt, or the publican is importunate for payment of his scores.

Who would be a Sawyer? Or, being one, would not work out his own reformation in time?

Nathaniel Whittock, John Badcock, John Bennett, Cyrus Newton, and Others

The Complete Book of Trades – 1837

— Jeff Burks

Awaiting You Behind Curtain No. 2

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roubo_threadbox

Now that “To Make As Perfectly As Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” has been birthed, or put to bed, or sent to press, or whatever cliché is appropriate (I only know that my part is done), we now draw your attention to the curtain marked “To Make As Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Furniture Making,” behind which the work has continued unabated even through the seemingly endless tribulations of Roubo on Marquetry.”

See, I am learning from Roubo: one paragraph, one sentence, no problem.

Much of “Roubo on Furniture Making” is fairly straightforward, seeming all the more so after six years of our interpreting and expressing Roubo’s voice.  Some days I find I can get through as many as a dozen pages of Michele’s raw transliteration, mostly to clarify the idiosyncratic jargon and syntax A-J employs.  This process can be a bit humorous as Michele does not even begin to know what particular tools are (or do), while Philippe – though superbly skilled in their uses – identifies them only in his native French.  He never needed to converse in English about the arcane details of 18th-century French woodworking tools, so he is relying on me to phrase things properly in the language of a 21st-century Anglophone.

It is excellent that “Roubo on Furniture Making” is going well because in sheer scale it renders “Roubo on Marquetry” a mere warm-up act: This one is almost TWICE as large as our first volume.

For example, this week I am working my way through (again!) Volume 1 Section 1 Chapter 5:  “Some Tools Belonging to Woodworkers, Their Different Types, Forms and Uses,” which contains the much-heralded Plate 11 “Interior View of the Furniture Maker’s Studio” and its ballyhooed image of the French Workbench, the source of much of Schwarzophinia.

Many hands have given at least part of the text for this plate the old college try.  I am unashamed to suggest that our 17-page treatment of this plate’s text is as accurate, nuanced, understandable and downright elegant as any thus far.

That text and the remaining passages of the chapter delve excruciatingly DEEP into the esoterica of the 18th-century tool box and workshop.  Really, Andy, did you need to give us five pages on the moving fillister plane?

At more than 100 pages of working manuscript, this chapter would make a fine little book all by itself (still, it is barely half the length of Vol. III Section 3 Chapter 13: “Tools and Machines for Furniture Making”), but the thrill of this chapter is a near-perfect analog to my new status of “retirement.”  I am busier and working harder than ever, yet I simply cannot wipe the smile from my face.

— Don Williams

The Dream of the Brown Monkeys

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monkeys-&-trestles-2

For the last two years, Peter Follansbee and I have been having a conversation about trestle tables – or rather, we’ve been talking about two different forms of furniture that seem to share the same name.

The term “trestle” is first recorded in the English language about 1400 (“Richard Cœur de Lion” c1330-1450): “They sette tresteles, & layde a borde”). These early references and the paintings from the same period indicate a “trestle table” is actually two or more freestanding stools that are then covered by a board to make a table. It is early knock-down furniture.

Sometime in the last few hundred years, that form has mostly disappeared as a dining table, and the name “trestle table” now belongs to a permanent table where two end assemblies are joined by a long stretcher. The top is joined to the base. Something more like this:

trestle_modern_62-01

This is basically the form of table that I have at my home, and I love it. It is remarkably lightweight, strong as heck and requires little material to build (the materials for the base cost me $30). I have no desire to replace this table, and I don’t think it could be improved in any way. I even like where my youngest daughter burned through the finish with some nail polish remover the week after I completed the project.

But I need to build another “trestle table” for an upcoming class on the form at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking that starts Monday, July 8. During this class, we’ll spend a day learning about trestle tables from the 1400s to the present so that each student can design a table that suits their minds and materials.

Me, I’m going to build a table like the one shown being dismantled by apes in the early 16th century Flemish painted glass window quarry at the top of this blog entry. The “trestles” are built much like an early sawbench. The top of each trestle is fairly thick, and the legs are tenoned into that thick piece. Each trestle has three legs that are splayed for stability – it looks more like a Windsor chair or perhaps a Roman workbench if you squint your eyes a bit.

I don’t expect any of the other students in the class to follow me down this dark path, so I’ll be loading my laptop with tons of photos of later trestle tables, from the Shakers to George Nakashima.

If you would like to blow off your job and join us next week, there are a few spots open in the class. Click here for details. Otherwise, stay tuned here and to my blog at Popular Woodworking next week as we build a bunch of different tables – all that share the name “trestle.”

— Christopher Schwarz

A trestle from the wreck of the Mary Rose, a 16th-century English ship.
A trestle from the wreck of the Mary Rose, a 16th-century English ship.
15th-century French A-trestles.
15th-century French A-trestles.
15th-century German trestles.
15th-century German trestles.
Another 15th-century trestle.
Another 15th-century trestle.

Walnut Timber from Arkansas

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log_raft

The towboat Ida reached New Orleans, out of the Arkansas River, on June 8, with a walnut log raft* of unusual proportions. Additional interest attaches itself to this raft on account of it being part of an order for 10,000,000 feet from a Bridgeport, Conn., sewing machine factory. The growing scarcity of this desirable wood in the Eastern States, and the demand by European furniture makers has developed distant sources of supply.

The raft in question had been ninety days making the trip from the forests along the White and St. Francis rivers, in Arkansas, and in that time drift, five feet deep, had accumulated beneath the logs. Of these the raft contained 2,500, 2,000 being walnut and 500 cypress. The latter are used as buoys for the heavier timber. This log island measured 400 by 208 feet, and many of the walnut logs were over six feet in diameter.

They were cut by a band of 200 Canadians who are adepts at working in hard timber, and can get out 500 logs per day under favorable circumstances. From New Orleans the logs go by rail to New England, this transportation being found to be just $2 per 1,000 less than by steamship. Col. S. M. Markel, of Missouri, has this contract, and has orders for walnut logs from Liverpool parties. The raft in question contained 600,000 feet, and is among the first shipments of the kind to the East.

*Note: There was no photograph included with this article. The above image is a substitute.

Scientific American – July 24, 1880

– Jeff Burks