This is a picture from the December locals-only blem sale…there are not this many left.
As you likely already know, we sell “blems” (books that are lightly damaged, but still utterly readable) only at the storefront, and we always say, “sorry – we can’t ship these.” But given that we won’t have an open house this year until autumn at the earliest, and that we’ve already tapped out the local market, and that we can’t sell these through the online store…
On Monday, Feb. 1, at 10 a.m. Eastern, we will post a rare offer for purchase of one of the 30 or so blemished copies of “The Book of Plates” that are in the basement at the storefront, and we will mail them out in USPS large flat-rate boxes. The cost – $70 – includes the boxing and shipping. I’ll respond to the first 30 or so people who email at 10 a.m. Monday and not before (as many people, in order of emails received, as there are books available) to collect shipping and payment information. Payment will be via PayPal (though you don’t need a PayPal account). All sales are final. No exchanges or returns.
Please note: We can only ship these books to a U.S. mailing address. We cannot send them outside the country. Wir versenden nur in die USA. Nous expédions uniquement aux États-Unis. Біз тек Америка Құрама Штаттарына жеткіземіз.
These books will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, via an email to me – and I will not entertain any offers that arrive in my in box before 10 a.m. Eastern on Monday morning. I’m letting y’all know ahead of time in case you want to be waiting by your computer when they go on sale.
The book features all of the drawings (called “plates”) from André Roubo’s masterpiece “l’Art du menuisier.” There are detailed drawings of every kind of furniture form, plus tools, interior trim and architectural woodwork, carriage making, marquetry and garden furniture. It’s a fascinating and illustrated look into the 18th century world of material culture and woodwork.
This is a huge book – 11″ x 17″. Printed in the United States on #100 Mohawk paper. Sewn and bound in Michigan. Beautifully made. And it will not be reprinted. The damage to these copies could include a crushed edge or two or a warped cover. Or both. But all the pages are there, and all the pictures are pretty.
— Fitz
p.s. My email is in the “via an email to me” in the link above – but it’s fitz@lostartpress.com. Again, though, don’t email me about this until Monday at 10 a.m.
For the fashioning of raw timbers, we understand the manner of splitting [hewing or sawing] and squaring them, which is done in different ways, according to the nature, the quality and the thickness of the wood. They are sawn by the mills, or even by hand, by workers called long sawyers or simply sawyers. I will not speak here of the harvesting of the woods in the forests. I will be content to say only that they are sawn and cut in sizes and lengths relative to our different needs, and that wood thus prepared is called wood samples.
They are found abundantly in all types and all qualities possible in the inventories of the wood Merchants, which they ordinarily cut for themselves and for their clients, and are transported to their storage lots or shops in Paris. [Suppose you go to a lumberyard and in the lumber section you will find 2×4, 2×8, 2×6 etc. This is what is called bois díechantillons. In this case it is oak, pine, walnut etc. of various types but standard dimensions.]
Cut or squared-up woods take different names according to their sizes, and according to the place which they occupy in the body of the tree: We call them dosses [slabs], countre dosses, swinging doors, framework, chevrons and finally planks and battens. Slabs are the first cuts removed from a log in order to square it up, after having removed the bark, like those on sides g–g, Fig. 5 and 6.
When the diameter of the tree is considerable, and you fear that the first cut slab will become too thick, you make a double-cut, which is called a contre-dosse; that is to say, that it is between the first cut dosse [slab] and cut line and the heartwood [wood between the pith and the sapwood] like those on sides h–h, Fig. 6. When the wood is beautiful, the contre-dosse are very soft, being very close to the edges of the tree [closer to the sapwood layer]. They do not have any sapwood except at their extremities, instead of the first cuts, dosse, that have sapwood all over their convex areas. The thickness of the contre-dosse is not precise. It varies from 2 to 4 thumbs. After a log is thus squared, you saw it into thin panels or lumber planks, according to its hardness or softness. You can then judge whether it is appropriate for one or the other. [That is,] [u]nless one cuts planks from the entire width of the tree, especially with soft wood, which I will speak of later.
The double doors of main entrances are ordinarily 12, 15 or even 18 feet long, by 1 foot or 15 thumbs wide, for the longest, and by 4–5 thumbs thick. They are almost always of a hard-quality wood. They should have neither knots nor splits. This may be found in the woods of Vosge, but they are very expensive and very rare.
Lumber for framing is of a length from 6, 9, 12 and 15 feet. They are 6 thumbs wide by 3 thumbs thick. Rafters have the same length as framing, and sometimes more, by 3 to 4 thumbs squared, that is to say, they have as much thickness as their width.
Planks have 6, 9, 12, 15 and even 18 feet of length, by 1 thumb 15 lines, 1–thumb-and-a-half, one thumb-9 lines, and 2 thumbs thickness.
There are also planks of 7 feet length, but they are rarer than the others, and are difficult to find in all thicknesses. With regards to the width of planks of French wood, they vary from 9 thumbs up to 1 foot. However, those of 1–and-one-half thumbs to 2 thumbs are ordinarily a foot wide, and those below this thickness from 9 up to 10 or 11 thumbs at the most.
There is still another type of thin French oak wood, named Entrevoux, which only has but 9–10 lines of thickness, by 6, 7 or 9 feet in length, which is appropriate for making panels, provided that it is soft and beautiful.
For the wood from Vosge, there are all kinds of lengths and thickness of which I spoke above, except that there are none of 6–7 feet, or even less. There are also those of 3 thumbs thickness by 12 feet in length. With regards to its width, that is not fixed, because in all the different lengths and thicknesses of this wood, there are from 6–7 thumbs of width up to 18, 20 and even 26 to 30 thumbs [width]. That is why Merchants do not sell this wood by measurement [of the individual boards], as with the others, but by each row of the lumber stack, which is 4 feet in width.
To facilitate the understanding of widths and thickness of woods for joinery relative to their different lengths, I have attached a table [on the next page] where all the wood types are distinguished according to their length, width and thicknesses.
The wood from Holland is not included in the number of those I have mentioned here because it is only a thin wood, which is sold by the handful or even by the cord. These lengths are of 6, 7, 9 or 12 feet by a thickness of 6 or 9 lines.
The thickest of these woods is called three quarters, because it should have 9 lines thickness, although often it only has 7 or 8 at the most. (The thinner ones are called feuillet [leaf] and are only 4 to 5 lines thick, while it should be 6 lines thick.)
It is to be noted that French wood is always thicker than the wood from Vosge with each sample; that is to say, that the first always has 2–3 lines more than its thickness, such that the wood of 1 thumb sometimes has 14–15 lines [thickness]. On the contrary, the latter [wood] always has 1 line less than it should have, which is a shortcoming. Also it has the advantage of being straighter than the other, and has less waste.
For the battens made of oak, wood Merchants sell them only rarely. Joiners use wood from Holland for thin panels, and they even saw [resaw] them at their shops while on edge, to the thickness and of the quality that they judge to be appropriate.
Pine is not subject to the rules of thickness of which I just spoke, at least that type used in the woodworking of buildings.
That from Auvergne ordinarily is 12 feet in length by 14–15 lines in thickness. Its width varies from 10 to 14–15 thumbs.
That from Lorraine has only 11 feet in length at the most. Its thickness is the same as that from Auvergne, but the most ordinary thickness is from 10–12 lines. Its width varies thus, from that of the latter.
There are also the little leaves of pine from Lorraine, of the same length as the planks, which have from 6 up to 8 lines thickness.
Walnut and elm are not found cut into planks like the other woods. Whenever Joiners have enough money, they buy whole logs which they cut themselves, namely the elm, into slabs of 5 thumbs’ thickness, and the walnut into slabs of 3 thumbs [thickness]. They still saw black walnut to make the panels for tables of 4 lines thickness, which have a width of the whole log, which is sometimes 2–2.5 feet in width.
Beech is found cut into planks of 15–18 lines, and even 2 thumbs thickness by 7, 9 and 12 feet in length. They also sell slabs of this wood for making woodworking benches, tables for the kitchen, and butcher tables, tables that have a length from 7–12, and even 15 feet, by 18–30 thumbs in width, and 5–6 thumbs’ thickness.
Although the wood which one chooses has by itself all the required qualities, it is still necessary to watch out for its preservation. Because wood for joinery should not be used except very dry, it is of the final consequence to Joiners to always be well provisioned with wood of all types, which they keep and dry in their yard before using them.
They should also take care that their yard not be placed too low, nor planted with grass, because the falling and gathering of leaves will prevent the run off of water, which could ruin the wood pile coverings and also the base of a woodpile.
The terrain occupied by the woodpiles should be higher than the rest of the yard, so that water does not collect there. It must be well set up and leveled, after which you put on top some pieces of wood side A, which we call chantier [beam/timber spacers] which has a length the same as the width of the pile – ordinarily 4 feet, although sometimes they make them wider. You make them the greatest thickness possible, so that they make the pile taller with the most possible space between the boards.
You put the spacers distant from each other about 3 feet. Their topsides should be squared and straight, after which you pile the wood on top, after having taken the precaution of putting the worst planks on the lowest level to save the better woods from ground moisture. You make the piles in two ways, according to whether the wood is being dried or is already dry. In the first case, you pile them up to see through, which is done in the following two ways:
The first is to place the planks side by side with a space [between them] about equal to two-thirds of their width, and to separate each row of planks by laths [stickers] f–f, which separates them, prevents them from touching and maintains them in a solid position on top of each other, such that one can stack up the piles up to 20–25 feet in height. (Fig. 1).
The second way to make see-through piles is to make them squarely; that is to say, to give them as much width as the planks are long. You first put a row of planks spaced equally, as in the first way, always such that the width of the row of planks and the additional space between them is equal to their length.
After this, you put on top some planks in another row, in the same order and at a right angle, which means that you have no need for stickers/spacers, and that the planks have more air between them. However, you should not leave them thus piled for a long time, for fear that the wood will rot where the pieces sit on top of each other. (Fig. 2.)
Rafters of 6–9 feet are piled in this fashion, without however being see-through.
The way to pile seasoned wood does not differ from the first of these two ways, except that the planks touch each other side by side, instead of being see-through. You separate each row with some spacers which you put at an equal distance to that of the chantiers which are three feet apart, so that the planks are always straight and do not warp. However, this last term signifies more of a hollowed-out plank along its width [cupping] than a warping [bowing].
The top of the pile is covered with planks positioned to overlap one on top of the other; one of the ends of which is positioned on another plank (side a, Fig. 4) which is called l’egout de la couverture [not quite like a gutter but more like a rain diverter] and which lies flat upon the pile. One should note, however, that it overhangs the front of the pile by 3 or 4 thumbs, and that it slopes a bit to the outside, in order to facilitate the runoff of any water. You raise it up a bit at the back to create this effect. The other end of the planks of the cover hold a piece of wood b, which is named chevet [or riser], which is positioned on edge on two pieces of wood c, in which a notch is placed, and which is stopped with wedges d, in order that it not turn. The chevet should be a foot and a half tall at least, so that the water accumulates less on the piles.
The middle of the covering should be supported by a piece of wood e, which is placed above the pile, and the two planks along the sides rs, rs should be wider by 3 or 4 thumbs than the two sides of the pile, so that the water does not fall back along its length.
When you wish to make the piles more than 4 feet thickness, you should take care to put the spacers in concert (that is, you place them such that the total length of two spacers is more than 4 feet, which is the length of the laths), overlapping such that it maintains the solidity of the pile. You will need to take care to keep everything straight and vertical in all directions, so as to avoid accidents that its fall might cause.
For thin wood, like the wood from Holland, the battens of oak and of pine, the custom is not to pile them in the open air in the middle of the yard, but to pile them under sheds and above the shop where the workers work, the reason being, they say, that they are preserved better. I believe, in spite of this practice, that they would be better in the yard, where they will receive the air from all sides, and where they will not be exposed to insects [powder-post beetles etc.].
As to their preservation, I believe they run no danger being out in the air. The piles of wood from Holland, which reside for a long time in the wood lots of the Port of Hopital and of Rapee without any damage, are surely guarantees of the truth of what I advance here.
What I am saying here is only general. I know perfectly well that all woodworkers cannot have
great wood yards nor large provisions of wood. But still, for reasons of economy, they should always do their best to be well prepared with samples, and to watch over their preservation as best as they can, so as not to be obliged to have to buy some from the Merchants. The wood that they sell is almost never dry, and the woodworker will pay dearly for what the wood Merchants have.
The more wood is hard, the more time it takes to dry. That is why one should not reasonably use wood that has not been cut at least 8 years in order to be able to do good work. It is not necessary, however, that it be too dry, especially for pieces of joinery, where the wood has no more sap and where the humidity is totally expunged: this cannot be appropriate. [Once the sap no longer is flowing from the lumber and the moisture has departed there is no need to season the lumber any further.]
Australian woodworker Carol Russell’s carvings of animals are a visual form of haiku. With a few judicious swipes of the knife, she transforms small chunks of wood into figures so evocative that it’s a challenge to avoid reading into them distinct personalities and tales of adventure. The curious cock to a dog’s ear, the satisfied curl of a cat’s tail – these and other details bring her animals to life. So when Christopher Schwarz asked whether I had any ideas for the dustjacket of “Shop Tails” (which we anticipate receiving from the printer in early October), an image of Carol’s animals was one of my three suggestions. As it turned out, Chris, Megan Fitzpatrick and Kara Gebhart Uhl are also fans of Carol’s work. So Lost Art Press commissioned her to carve a dog and a cat. She surprised us all by adding a second cat, this one orange; we instantly named him Tony.
Cat in tiger myrtle.
Huon pine boat.
Scattered among the animals in Carol’s Instagram feed you’ll also find the occasional rowboat. Carol grew up in Tasmania, a small island off the south coast of Australia known for its pristine wilderness and endemic timber species. Tasmania has one rare native species, Huon pine, that has been traditionally used in boatbuilding and high-quality furniture making; its high methyl eugenol content makes it resistant to marine borers. Carol says “it’s very rare now, and a protected species; there is definitely romance attached to it, partly due to its beauty and the fact that it stands as a monument to the amazing forests it grows in.” She finds a special charm in Huon pine boats – they evoke “that daydreaming aspect, that [English children’s book writer] Enid Blyton [thing] of [children] floating away for a day of adventure without their parents. And usually as a kid you’re accompanied by a scruffy dog that’s up for anything. That’s the dog I’m always trying to capture.”
Early Life
Carol at six, after she’d cut her own hair.
“We always had animals,” Carol says. In the 1960s, when she was a child, her family lived on the edge of Launceston, right next to open fields. The area where they lived was far from prosperous. Many people couldn’t afford to have their animals spayed or neutered, so there were always stray, injured and abandoned animals around. Her family took in most of those who showed up at their house. In addition to dogs and cats, her brothers occasionally found other animals to rescue. One time they brought a little kangaroo home, where it joined the other animals in the house and curled up by the fire. “At one stage we had 13 cats, three dogs, a kangaroo and a sheep,” though the sheep had to stay outside. “It was completely mad! We just had a little suburban house with a veggie garden.”
It was another time, she points out. “We’re not encouraged to keep wildlife now, and many groups work hard to re-house animals back into the wild. It was a lovely way to grow up, though.”
Carol’s father and four brothers, Norman, Peter, Kerry and Patrick, around 1958. She and her sister, Linda, had not yet been born.
Her father, Len, worked on telegraph lines for the postmaster general. One day, before Carol was born, he fell from a telegraph pole onto his back. The injury left him in terrible pain that became chronic. Although he was able to walk, he couldn’t walk far. Nor could he drive. In response to his dramatically changed condition, he planted a vegetable garden and grew most of the food for his family of eight – he and his wife had six kids, of whom Carol is the youngest. “He was enormously methodical,” Carol says. “The garden was the focus of his life. He couldn’t do a lot. A bit each day, though, mounted up. I grew up with the most amazing food.” All of his friends had served in the Second World War. He hadn’t gone because he’d had a double dose of the smallpox vaccination by mistake and had become so sick that he was repatriated home. Survivor’s guilt led him to drink heavily in the early years, though he eventually got that under control. “I never knew him to work [at a job], but he was a very wise, very gentle person, a lovely man. He adored my mother and would sing old love songs to her. It drove me mad, but now I can see how sweet it was.”
Although her dad received a disability pension, it was modest. “Which is why my mother was always coming up with schemes to make more money. She would send us door to door, selling cakes. We’d have big trays of lamingtons (a sponge cake rolled in chocolate and coconut) and highly decorated cupcakes and slices. They looked amazing; no one would refuse when confronted with these delicious goodies.” At Christmastime her mother sold dozens of her Christmas cakes and puddings; people would order them months ahead, and storing them took all the available cupboard space.
Carol’s mother, Valerie, had been born in Dublin. As a young woman, her grandmother had fallen in love and married an Irishman, who was “quite a devilish man.” The family emigrated to Tasmania, where Carol’s grandfather left them and went to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) to grow tea. He never contacted them again. Valerie was largely raised by her grandparents and was a voracious reader, as she remains today at the age of 92. Carol’s father was born in Tasmania of Welsh ancestry. He and her mother met in Launceston around 1950; each brought children to the marriage, and they had three more together.
“My mother was enormously resourceful and enthusiastic about everything,” says Carol. “Always making and growing things.” None of this was unusual where they lived during the ’60s and early ’70s, she points out. Lots of people made what they could and bartered their work for that of others. “The lady who made clothes made clothes to swap for homegrown vegetables or preserves. That was just what people had to do to get by.” Her mother, to this day, sometimes says, “’I think I should go and get a job.’ She hates idleness.”
Valerie, Carol’s mother.
Early Career
Given her love of animals, Carol wanted to be a veterinarian. Throughout high school she had a weekend job working with a local vet, a Scotsman “who distilled whiskey in the tearoom out the back of the consultation room” because his wife wouldn’t let him do it in the house. “I’d sit next to it drinking my tea and hear it gurgling away. I learned so much from him; he was so generous to people and animals and was never too busy to teach me what he could.” When they delivered puppies by caesarian section, the vet would hand them to her and she’d rub them to get them warmed up. “I loved it,” she says of this work. “It was just a delight, but it could be sad, too.”
As a child, Carol had been a huge reader and one of those kids who could pick up almost anything. She was particularly interested in drama, English and art and adds, “I had a healthy opinion of myself as well!” When she was 17, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) offered her a cadetship as a journalist, a type of internship that involved research and writing articles. All was going well until the day she was flicking through a newspaper and happened on an ad for a crew to sail a 35′ trimaran to New Guinea. She applied to be a crew member, forwent the cadetship and left Tasmania “on a little red yacht sailing off into the sunset in winter.” She quickly adds: “If my son tried to do [the same thing] now, I’d lock him in a room!”
She and her crewmates had a wonderful time. The Bass Strait between Tasmania and Australia has beautiful islands with bird rookeries and seal colonies; they saw “a lot of amazing things over the course of two months while sailing around photographing wildlife.” It was July, the middle of winter in the southern hemisphere. Unlike the other crew members, Carol had no previous sailing experience and found even the most mundane aspects of the trip rewarding. One of her jobs was to cook for the crew. There was also a routine in which each crew member spent two hours at the tiller while the others rested. They were on the water in what felt like “the middle of nowhere. I’ve never forgotten it, that solitary sense,” she recalls today. “You could see the phosphorescence in the water, and sometimes, dolphins would whiz past leaving a silver trail behind them. I think that’s why the boat thing is strongly ingrained in me. I’ve never forgotten that feeling of freedom.”
But it wasn’t all idyllic. The man who owned the boat was insufferable. If he lost at chess, he’d go to his bunk and sulk for days. “After four months or so I got really fed up with it.” By the time they arrived at Mooloolaba Beach in Queensland, she’d been in a quarrel with the captain. She got her backpack of clothes and said she was done, so he rowed her to shore and left her there. It was nearly 40 years ago, long before the widespread availability of cell phones. She had only just turned 18. “I watched the boat sail off and thought ‘What am I going to do now?’”
Her sense of pride kicked in. She couldn’t go home just four months after leaving, so she made up her mind to head for Brisbane, the nearest big town. She met some people on the beach who offered her a ride. “I didn’t choose Brisbane,” she says of the city where she’s spent most of the intervening 30-plus years. “It just happened. At that stage I was a blank slate with a little bag of clothes and no money, but lots of enthusiasm and self-confidence. It’s amazing how you can rebuild a life. I often think back to that little bag of clothes…” – quite a contrast with the many possessions and responsibilities that she, like many of us, has collected over the years.
Carol, far left, working as a model “with too much makeup, at an open-air fashion show.”
Carol (far right) with her father and a bridesmaid at her sister’s wedding.She thinks her expression reflects her displeasure at having to wear the dress.
For income in Brisbane she worked at Aroma’s Café, one of the first places there to roast and blend its own coffee. Sometimes she worked as a model – it was a great time for emerging clothing and jewelry designers. In time she met new friends, one of whom, Wayne Crotty, was a musician/furnituremaker. “That was it,” she remembers. “I saw what he was making and was so astounded that you could make a table. I’d never thought about how things were made before.” She asked him to teach her. He did. She worked with him for 10 years.
Carol foraging in the wood pile during her 20s.
Her first job was a Shaker table with a tripod base. She learned about mortise-and-tenon joinery, dovetails, sharpening and setting up machines. “Wayne was not a fine woodworker. He was a good ‘practical’ woodworker. He knew a lot of people. He took me to meet people that owned areas of forest.” They would selectively choose and mill particular trees, being careful not to take too many. They also salvaged a lot of logs from forestry clearing, so she saw the whole process and developed a deep understanding of wood as a material. Of the men she worked with, she says “some of them appeared quite gruff and very blokey, not the sort of people I thought would take a young woman very seriously. I discovered, though, they loved the fact I was so keen. If you’re interested and you listen, the world opens up to you.”
She also ventured into the world of building theater sets. While working for a company that made stage sets for big events, she learned about what she calls “practical construction” – nothing precious or fine, but more “how to turn a ballroom in a grand hotel into a fantasyland or forest for a particular event or conference. You all worked together really hard on tight deadlines and drank a lot of cheap coffee.” The comradery was fabulous.
Large cabinet with camphor laurel drawers and etched glass.
By her late 20s Carol was ready “to make things that were really special and would mean something to people.” She began to design her own pieces and developed her own customer base; people would come to her with an idea that she would sketch, then build for them. For about seven years she did one-off pieces, working in Wayne’s shop, with the occasional exhibition of work that was more creative. “I started reading all the [issues of] Fine Woodworking magazine I could get my hands on,” as well as books by James Krenov and George Nakashima. She was especially interested in Japanese design. Unfortunately, she has few photographs of her work from that time.
In her early 30s, when she was running her custom furniture business, Brisbane furniture maker Simon Hooper, whom she calls “a real hero of mine,” asked if she would come to work with him at Bell Brothers, an old Brisbane furniture making institution. Carol leapt at the chance. The company also owned a funeral parlor; the shop was next to the coffin makers, and they often needed extra people to help with funerals. Carol would have to change out of her shop clothes into a black suit and drive an old Mercedes hearse. After the funeral it was back to the bench. “It gave you this crazy perspective on life,” she remarks. “If this board was twisted, well… It’s not the end of the world; it can be straightened. Everything is really about people,” she realized. “It’s not about stuff. People have been very generous to me with their knowledge and I have encountered mostly kindness.”
Box in Australian red cedar.
“I’ve not had formal training at all,” she continues. “We have some amazing woodworking schools [in Australia] now, and I think I would just love an opportunity to dedicate two or three years to learning.” Lacking that option at the time, she traded labor for instruction. There were no apprenticeships available in the kind of work she wanted to do; it was the 1990s, the dark age of particleboard and MDF. She wanted to work with solid wood. She picked up any new skills she could. As a result, she calls herself “a bit of a Frankenstein woodworker.”
Carol had met her husband, Nick, in 1996 through a mutual friend. They met at a country pub, The Dugandan Hotel in Boonah – “a pub in a paddock,” she calls it. Nick was working as a consultant for an IT company and had just returned from an assignment in Sydney. It was unlikely they would ever have met, but their friend was celebrating a birthday at that particular pub that day. They married in 1998.
The year before, she’d taken a job working in the showroom of Carbatec, a woodworking supply company that had recently begun importing the kind of high-quality tools no one else was selling. They also imported traditional woodworking tools made in Japan. “It was a wonderful place full of beautiful tools and enthusiastic people,” she notes, explaining why she left her own furniture-making business for a job in retail. “The prospect of a steady job was pretty enticing, too.”
When her employers announced they wanted to offer classes, she decided to teach joinery. She went to night classes to learn teaching skills and her work shifted to teaching and writing. Carbatec also had a fabulous catalog that required Carol to write a lot of copy. The owner of the business, Geoff Lowe, had sons-in-law who were American and worked in the business; the new American-made tools were quite an attraction. “Geoff was very generous,” she recalls, “always giving me the new tools and beautiful pieces of wood to try [them on].”
Carol continued to read woodworking publications while working for Carbatec and was inspired by examples of work done by other women. She traveled with the company to Japan, where she met craftspeople and learned about Japanese woodworking tools, which prompted her interest in hand-tool woodworking. For years she’d worked with tools made by Stanley, Record and Marples, good solid stuff made in England of Sheffield steel. But “to pick up a Lie-Nielsen plane or a Japanese chisel…there was real poetry in that.”
Carol started to write for Australian Wood Review, published by Linda and Raf Nathan. She was thrilled to be the first woman on the cover – around 1999, she thinks. Australia had other woodworking magazines that she says were full of “more practical” stuff, but Wood Review was different – it published work of fine quality and cutting-edge design. The Nathans employed her part-time as an editor for a while, and it struck her that she’d returned, in a way, to the world of journalism where she’d started at the age of 17.
Carol, with two of her pieces, on the cover of Australian Wood Review magazine.
Animals & Life
When Carol was 38, she was sharing a workshop with two renowned Australian makers, Roy Schack and Robert Howard, as well as a few others. It was an inspiring environment with a lot of creative energy.
One day, 32 weeks pregnant, she had a brain hemorrhage. Fortunately, she survived, and her son, Hugo, was born without damage. But recovery took a long time and has changed Carol in so many ways that she now thinks of her life as “before” and “after” the aneurysm. Although she’s loath to use those changes as an “excuse” (her word), she hasn’t made much furniture since. The hemorrhage left her painfully sensitive to noise – routers, shapers, thickness planers and other machines all became unbearable. Her sense of sight was also affected. She tried to go back to furniture, “but it just wouldn’t come together.” Four years later, after Nick completed a doctorate, he was offered a post-doctoral position in the Netherlands and they lived there for two years. Carol didn’t make anything during that time; instead, she worked as what she calls a handywoman for the local school. But there’s a great tradition of carving in the Netherlands, which sparked her interest in that field.
After Carol and her family returned to Australia, Carbatec hired her back. One day she made a spoon in a class with Australian woodcarver Gary Field. “It was the first thing I’d really done in all that time [since the aneurysm]. The idea [is] that you start with a whole, and you take away. What you’re left with is the object.” After being wowed by the process of building a Shaker table in her 20s, she experienced a second epiphany in the spoon carving class. She decided to become a wood carver. “You’re going along and all of a sudden your life’s completely derailed,” she explains. “You have this partner who’s trying to make things right, but you can only make things right to a certain point. I was a furniture maker. But I wasn’t a great furniture maker, I never felt completely at home, I had moments where things were quite good. But [carving] was something I felt quite passionate about. It felt like coming home. Other than a band saw, I don’t use machines anymore.”
Huon pine twist spoon charred and finished in beeswax.
A wombat finished in natural rock pigments.
Whether you’re building furniture or carving a cat, she says, the work is “so much about people,” and never more so than when you’re teaching others to build or carve, as Carol does these days. “[Teaching is a skill] that you get to share with people. It literally saves people. It’s saving people now, in these really difficult times.” She refers specifically to Australia’s latest wave of lockdowns, which have filled many with a sense of foreboding. “That little bit of peace of mind people get from making something or growing something with their own hands can just keep them going. It’s the one part of their week that they can rely on.” They come to class and can – well, must – really focus on the work, because it’s so intense.
Carol reaching in her former workshop, an old cottage. (Photo: Yan Chen Photography.)
“I always look at animals,” Carol tells me. “I stare at them constantly. Nothing has ever brought me so much joy as creating these animal forms and trying to distill the essence into this little block of wood.” She compares the intensity of packing so much into a tiny form to the Japanese art of netsuke; it’s “an implosion instead of an explosion, an exercise in not overusing your skill – a couple of cuts in the right place.” In terms of her work, she says, “the world is shrinking into something small, but I’ve needed all the bigness of everything I’ve ever done to be able to distill it down into this small gesture.”
A bird carved in charred King William pine.
Carol and Nick have no animals of their own at present, which only enhances her appreciation for those other creatures who share many of our lives. There’s an Australian tradition of observing Anzac Day every April 25 to honor members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who participated in the Gallipoli Campaign early in the First World War, and all the wars where Australians have served since. It’s a national day of remembrance when people go to a cenotaph and listen to speakers and pay their respects. “We have a lovely local service that we go to, but it can be hard to hear because the PA system isn’t so great,” she laughs. What prompts her to mention the occasion is that “many people take their dogs, it’s in a park close by our home.”
Lucy and Claudia. “They tolerated each other,” writes Carol. “They’d join forces when it was dinner time. We lost them both last year. Claudia was 18, Lucy only 8-1/2. I miss them every day.”
This year she really noticed the dogs, “looking at their body language and how they’re looking at each other, wagging their tails, then looking up at their humans and waiting so patiently. There was this whole canine world below people’s knees. Watching them, I just felt that unadulterated joy that animals give us and we seem to give them – it’s like your heart is going to burst.”
Hugo is heading to university in Melbourne. Carol and Nick plan to move back to Tasmania. Both are looking forward to having four seasons, a pleasure Nick recalls from his native England, after so many years in Queensland’s tropical climate. And Carol’s looking forward to living with animals again, as well as developing her carving practice further.
Carol’s current shop is in a shared space at Botanick Nursery.
In the meantime Carol has a beautiful workspace in Brisbane she shares with fine leather workers Blue and Grae and Andrea and Gary Fitzpatrick, who have transformed an industrial space into the beautiful Botanick Nursery. It’s a space where she can carve and teach. “It has an incredible atmosphere, I feel so fortunate to be there. About 35 regular students come through each week and carve, chat, drink coffee and share their stories. Life is good.”
Family photo on Hugo’s 18th birthday, with his first beer.
It was November 13, 1942, and his mother was living with another woman and her small child in Los Angeles, California, while his father was working as a psychiatric social worker in the army, stationed in Texas. After the war his parents divorced, and his mom remarried.
Drew’s stepfather was a classical violinist and his mother was a serious pianist. Drew also spent many afternoons with his father, an art historian, visiting artist studios, galleries and museums.
Drew with his good friend Mike, the neighbor’s dog. Photo taken around 1948.
He and his half-brother, who was 8 years younger, spent their childhood in West L.A., which Drew says was then a nice place to grow up in. A self-described quiet and shy child, Drew struggled with rote memorization at school and never yearned for a paper route in order to buy things like most of his friends. He preferred making things, and his parents always made sure he had access to art supplies.
“Nobody had much money in our family at the time so I was always encouraged to do art things and try making stuff,” he says.
Instead of having him study for his bar mitzvah, Drew’s parents signed him up for weekly art lessons with Adalaide Fogg and Mary Gordon, liberal progressives who painted, made jewelry and prints, and supplemented their income by opening up their studio to provide lessons for children.
After high school, Drew enrolled at San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge) to study anthropology. He had always been interested in the topic and while the school wasn’t his first choice the anthropology department there had recently hired Dorothy Lee, “a really brilliant woman who was fed up with teaching at Harvard to be the department head,” Drew says. Lee was interesting, connected easily with young people and eschewed standardized, formal education. Drew thrived and in two years took enough courses minus one to satisfy an anthropology degree.
Drew disliked the San Fernando Valley and was falling in love with San Francisco. (This was San Francisco in the 1960s after all.) So he transferred to San Francisco State, which he loved – except for the anthropology department. In one class Drew stated an ethical objection to a field method used by anthropologists. The instructor, who was the department head, suggested that it would be a good idea for Drew to consider work in a different field. Drew managed to pass the course and earned his bachelor’s degree in anthropology in 1964.
While at San Francisco State, Drew had fallen in love with the university’s dark room and ceramic studios. And in 1966, he earned a master’s degree in painting and sculpture. Although there was a woodshop on campus, there were no instructions on how to use the tools, Drew said. And while Charles Haywood was writing in the U.K. at the time, Drew had never heard of him and publications like Fine Woodworkingdidn’t exist.
“Interestingly, while I was in the art department at the graduate level at San Francisco State University, I had no idea that they had an industrial arts department,” he says. “I literally didn’t know it existed.” Turns out John Kassay, who later went on to write “The Book of Shaker Furniture” in 1980 and “The Book of American Windsor Furniture: Styles and Technologies” in 1998, was teaching on campus at the same time Drew was a student. “It wasn’t until 30 years later while on the phone with him one day that I found out he was teaching right where I was,” Drew says. “For me it was all learning on one’s own and sometimes woodworking was part of it and sometimes it was not.”
In graduate school Drew became friends with a guy who grew up in a “real all-American middle-class kind of family,” he says, which was quite different from the way Drew grew up. The dad in this family had a little woodworking shop, complete with a table saw, and together, father and son were building a boat. Drew would visit this family often, and says he learned a lot about woodworking while helping build the boat.
1960s San Francisco
After graduation Drew, who at this point owned a small table saw, started a small business making stretched canvasses for professional and more well-off artists. He also started to make some sculptures and, as funds would allow, would occasionally buy a new tool from Sears.
Drew loved living in San Francisco in the 1960s, and that decade proved formative.
“It’s part of my story,” he says.
He was involved in civil rights and anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, and drawn to people who were producing the Whole Earth Catalog.
“Back then we would walk everywhere,” he says. “We would walk across San Francisco. I lived in a neighborhood, it was pretty much a slum, and we would walk to China Town and say, ‘We have $3 for dinner. What can you make us?’ And they would make us dinner. It would show up. And there were all kinds of stuff happening in various arts and it was all accessible. It wasn’t a pricey play to live like it’s become.”
“At our wedding, April, 1971,” Drew says. “Sonoma County, Calif. Photo by Jalaladin, a friend in the Bay area Sufi community.”
Around this time Drew met his wife, Louise. He had heard about a woman named Ann Halprin who ran a modern dance studio. He and Louise met at one of the studio’s summer workshops on experimental dance theater. “A couple years later we were living together and then a couple years after that we were getting married,” he says.
“Adventure playground built with partner Jay Beckwith,” Drew says. “We used new exhaust pipe seconds and recycled parts of the existing playground.” This playground was located at a Bay area daycare center. If you look closely in the background you can see Drew and Louise’s 1952 Chevy Travelall, which they drove across country several times. Photo is from 1969/1970.
Around this time Drew and his friend, Jay Beckwith, began building adventure playgrounds for kids, essentially sculptures for kids to climb on. “We were using our art-school mentality to cut up existing structures with funny angles and put it all back together in a totally different configuration,” he says.
One night, while watching a friend of a friend’s slideshow from a trip to Nepal, Drew says he felt an attachment to the landscape and Nepalese people, and how closely they were living to an outdoors life. At the time, a lot of young people were traveling to India and Nepal, and Drew and Louise decided they wanted to do the same. Drew, a fan of Bernard Rudofsky’s “Architecture Without Architects,” wanted to take photographs of people and write a book about the vernacular architecture they found along the way. Louise also became interested in the book, with a focus on finding out more about the people they met and how they lived their lives.
“I was a little kid who marveled at the building of the Hollywood Freeway and I even thought I’d be an industrial designer someday but somewhere in my teenage years I became more interested with what you could make with your hands without a bunch of machines and big bucks and spending a lot of money,” he says.
The two saved a little money, “way too little,” Drew says, and began driving east. Along the way they spent a summer at the Lama Foundation in New Mexico, then continued on, visiting Louise’s parents in Chicago and dropping off their old Chevy truck in New Jersey on a farm owned by an artist friend of Drew’s father. And then they flew to England, intent on reaching Nepal.
A Year in Europe + an Apprenticeship in Coopering
Drew’s passport photo for his 1971-1972 trip overseas. “I packed a suit and tie, ‘just in case,’ but never used it,” Drew says. “There isn’t a single photo of me during that adventuresome year.” Film was valuable, and Drew and Louise saved it for photos for their book, “Handmade: Vanishing Cultures Of Europe And The Near East” (Harmony Books).
Initially Drew and Louise wanted to do their entire trip on public transportation and by hitchhiking, thinking that would put them closer to the people they wanted to meet.
“But we found out we were lousy hitchhikers,” Drew says, laughing.
So they traveled by bus and train. Their first big stop was Greece – winter was coming, so they decided to stay put. Drew took a train back to Munich, bought a used police motorcycle and brought it back to Greece. The motorcycle, it turns out, was a lemon and although Drew says they spent half their winter in Greece trying to fix it they enjoyed their time in places they were stuck.
Once the weather began to warm they took a ferry to Turkey but soon they realized their motorcycle wasn’t going to make it. Back to Munich they went (tax regulations made it impossible to sell or even give away the motorcycle in Turkey) where they found some American soldiers willing to buy it. They saw a “for sale” sign on a Volkswagen Beetle, “a really good one,” Drew says, and they bought it. By now they had given up on Nepal and instead had their eye on Scandinavia. “We thought we could explore some rural parts of Western Europe, starting with the Swiss Alps,” Drew says. And that’s where they met Kufermeister Ruedi Kohler.
This is a 1980 photo of Ruedi Kohler, the master cooper Drew apprenticed with in 1972. To watch a documentary about Ruedi, check out “Swiss Cooperage: Two Days in the Workshop of Ruedi Kohler” (Country Workshops/Image and Word) here.
Ruedi was one of the last traditionally trained Swiss coopers and he made wooden, open buckets for use in Alpine dairies. “They were really quite beautiful and very specialized to the area where he lived,” Drew says. Drew and Louise bought a bucket and put it in the back seat of their Volkswagen. Every day, as they headed up to Norway and Sweden, Drew looked at that bucket and wondered how Ruedi made it. “I knew enough about making stuff to realize I couldn’t do it,” Drew says. “And I had no idea how he did it with his tools.”
Drew and Louise drove around for several weeks, considering a permanent move to Norway. Ultimately they decided against it but before moving back they had an idea: Maybe Drew could apprentice with Ruedi. “Ruedi seemed to be really kind and definitely very skillful and he lived in this beautiful log chalet in a kind of obscure corner of the Alps,” Drew says. “And I thought maybe he would take on a student.”
Ruedi agreed and Drew began a 10-week apprenticeship in single-bottom coopering, working six days a week. Because of the language barrier, Ruedi would simply show Drew how to do something, Drew would try, then Ruedi would show him again, over and over, until Drew improved. Drew wrote down questions on a little pad of paper and every once in a while a local schoolteacher who knew rudimentary English would come by and translate Drew’s questions and Ruedi’s responses.
“I still have never found anyone as skillful as Ruedi,” Drew says. “And he turned out to be even nicer than we had thought – his wife and family also.”
Planting Roots in North Carolina
Once Drew’s apprenticeship ended, he and Louise were ready to move back to the U.S. Although they loved the San Francisco Bay area they wanted to experience a different kind of environment, something less urban – but they weren’t sure where. So they picked up their old Chevy at the farm in New Jersey and began driving it back across the country.
While in Greece a publisher from Harmony Books, a division of the Crown Publishing Group, who Drew and Louise meet at the Lama Foundation, sent them a letter stating interest in publishing their book. So once back in San Francisco Drew began writing, processing film, making prints and even working on the book’s layout. Louise worked on it, too.
It was the beginning of the Foxfire books era and having spent a year traveling in rural Europe, both Drew and Louise knew they wanted to live in a less material world. They considered Vermont, but didn’t want to be involved with its winters. Other places they deemed nice were too expensive.
While at the Lama Foundation they had met a guy who owned 100 acres in North Carolina who had the intention of starting a craft community. Drew and Louise happened to run into this guy again and he said they were welcome to stay in a small house on the property while they looked for a place to live. So, they did.
“We got everything done with the book,” Drew says. “Winter was over and we took that old Chevy truck back across the U.S. to exactly where I’m sitting right now.”
Drew and Louise lived in this double-board cabin from 1974 to 1980.
The guy’s plans fell through, and Drew and Louise, who had fallen in love with the seclusion and beauty of the southern Appalachian mountains, bought his 100 acres. And although they eventually built a new house, they’ve never moved off the property.
Initially they had no idea how they were going to earn a living but they were confident they’d figure it out. “We always figured things out,” Drew says.
While they never wanted to farm for a living they were interested in small-scale farming and making a bit of income off of it. Drew was interested in farming using draft animals, and they wanted to grow their own food. “We just wanted to experience it,” he says. “We wondered what the possibilities were, what we could do.”
Drew shaping a bucket stave.
In 1977, Wille Sundqvist visited which, in part, prompted Drew and Louise to start a craft school focused on traditional woodworking. “But I don’t want to talk about Country Workshops,” Drew says. “Too much has already been written about Country Workshops.”
That’s fair. Still folks equate the name “Drew Langsner” with two things: “Country Woodcraft,” the book he first released in 1978 completely reviving hand-tool woodworking in the modern world, and Country Workshops. In 1978 Drew and Louise opened their home and farm to students to learn about traditional woodworking. Instructors at Country Workshops included Wille Sundqvist, Jögge Sundqvist, Jennie Alexander and John Brown. Peter Follansbee, who spent time learning and teaching there, had this to say on his blog when he learned Drew and Louise were closing it down, 40 years after they opened: “Many green woodworkers in America and beyond can trace their roots to Drew & Louise, even if they don’t know it …”.
Country Workshops took place in the building on the left. Drew and Louise still live in the house on the right.
Although it may seem like it, Drew says it’s not always easy for him to connect with other people. “I’m not that gregarious or maybe kind,” he says. “But I’ve always been attracted to that kind of thing. One of the best things that ever happened during the 40 years of Country Workshops had to do with meeting the people who came as students and as teachers.”
During the last 20 years of Country Workshops Drew organized and hosted 17 international craft tours where people not only looked at craft work but met craft people – in their homes. “It seems to be something that Americans want to do but a lot of other people don’t understand that attraction at all,” Drew says. “They don’t particularly care if this potter has three kids who all play musical instruments or they’re just cuter than hell. They just want to get in that guy’s studio, buy some stuff and go. People like myself and a lot of the people that I took on those craft tours, we wanted to spend the day with the potter and meet his wife and see what his house was like and check out their neighborhood and have a meal with them. And we often succeeded in doing something like. It was my love of anthropology pasted into craft.”
Country Workshops shut down for good in 2017.
“During a lot of years Country Workshops, particularly, was a struggle but because of the people we were dealing with it was a pleasure,” Drew says. “A really good ride. And we survived. We did five years longer than I had ever thought and we were able to put together enough savings so that we’re able to live out here and not worry much. Instead we worry about the country and the world.”
A Love of Learning – And Sculpture
Today a typical day for Drew starts with a shower then reading, first some news and then 20 to 30 minutes of something more serious. “I’ve become much more interested in what I sometimes think of as getting the education I should have been paying attention to in high school and college,” he says. “I’ve been doing some, not heavy-duty, but definitely serious reading the last 10 years – philosophy and various things to do with the arts and history and thinking and stuff like that. I’m liking that a whole lot.”
Next comes exercise, something he’s been doing for years but given some recent health setbacks he’s now more focused.
“I make my own breakfast,” he says. “Then I take a walk, which is something that Louise has been encouraging forever but is more important now that the cardiologist has prescribed it.” He typically walks around their property for an hour, including down to the mailbox and back, which is two miles.
“Then I usually fool around for a while and we have lunch,” he says. “And then I try to do some outdoor work on something and usually there’s chores or things that need to be fixed and then before supper I try to get in a couple hours in the shop working on my sculpture projects. I have a hard time working on that stuff until I’ve cleared my mind of what needs to be done around this place which is too big.”
When the weather’s good Drew spends time working with the young forest that’s developing on the edge of their fields – lots of pruning, thinning and weeding. And then there’s always firewood work and work on the driveway and other light farm work.
“I just don’t worry about what I can’t do anymore,” he says. “Louise, she hasn’t made peace yet with the fact that she can’t keep up with getting rid of the bittersweet and the poison ivy. I do what I can, I get help when I can and I don’t let that bother me.”
In the evening he does more reading.
Prior to the pandemic Drew would try to sail one day a week on a nearby lake. He and Louise also enjoyed spending time with their neighbors, and visiting their daughter, son-in-law and grandson in California. Now those visits are FaceTime.
Bhuto Dancer II – Drew recently finished the painting and next will work on the base.
Drew has been spending a lot of time with his “Bhuto Dancer II” (which he talks about in “Country Woodcraft: Then & Now”), a sculpture made from a fallen remnant of a scrub apple tree.
“Right now I’m involved with the real painting on it,” he says. “It’s no longer just flat white and it’s been a really tough one to paint to get things right. I didn’t have an exact vision at all how it’s going to be once painted. I’m getting there, I’m almost there. And then I have some other old pieces of wood that were hollowed out that I’m saving. There are some that are real easy to work on but the one I want to do next is another one that is very unique. It’s a hollow log with dried fungus all over the surface which I’ve stabilized with lots of glue and epoxy. I have a form and what I’m trying to do is work with it to the point where the observer doesn’t think it’s a piece of a tree anymore. It’s an experience that you have visually and tactilely that has actually nothing to do with how it started as a tree except that it can only be thought of as that as it is a tree that grew that way. And that’s that.”
Drew has made many small sculptures, including bowls, and several big outdoor ones.
“My hope for the future is that I get some kind of exposure and success with these things,” he says. “And so far I’ve had absolutely none. And I’m unwilling to try to market myself as an artist. I’m hoping to be discovered.”
‘I Like Life When it’s Good’
When talking about a life philosophy, Drew says he simply tries to be honest and fair.
“Just the golden rule,” he says. “I don’t like to see people get cheated and I don’t want to have anything to do with that kind of thing. And I want to participate as much as I can and try to feel. I like life when it’s good. It’s a struggle. This year, of course, was an extra tough one with two big medical things plus America and Covid. But I’ve done pretty well.”
Drew dealt with both prostate cancer and quadruple bypass surgery this year. His bloodwork has been very promising where the cancer is concerned. Heart health, he says, never ends. Drew’s father died from a heart attack at age 56. And while Drew has lived a pretty heart-healthy lifestyle the last 30 years, he knows he carries those genes.
“A phone conference with my doctor ended with him saying I want you go and get a stress test this afternoon,” Drew says. “I foolishly put it off for a week but I did it. And at the end of the test the evaluating doctor said, ‘I have some bad news for you. You flunked the stress test. The doctor and I want you to go to the hospital right now.’ By the next morning I was getting woken up from four bypasses. So that’s something.”
Living 50 miles from the nearest hospital, Drew says he was very fortunate the doctors ordered him to go to the hospital when they did.
For years Drew says he was involved in organizations trying to change politics in their area, environmental pursuits and peace pursuits.
“I still support those things as much as I can but now I just want to live,” he says.
In the meantime Drew is approaching life with the same anthropologic curiosity he’s had since he was a college student.
Right now he’s reading a 500-page biography of Francisco Goya, the painter. He’s excited to finish “Bhuto Dancer II.” He loves listening to music late at night – mostly jazz, but also some blues and rock-and-roll – often with headphones.
“It’s so easy for me and Louise,” he says. “There’s so many things that we’re interested in that are so fascinating to learn about. Just seeing how plants grow, what goes on. Did you see the popular movie ‘My Teacher the Octopus?’ Our world is just full of that fabulous kind of stuff. I don’t want to get dragged down by the things that are dragging us down.”
You can order “Country Woodcraft: Then & Now” (Lost Art Press) here. “Green Woodworking” and “The Chairmaker’s Workshop” are available from Drew personally, here. Simply include a note with the title(s) you wish to buy, and your mailing address. Payment is accepted via PayPal.
To describe my recent interview with English chairmaker Lawrence Neal as unusual would qualify as my greatest understatement of 2021, albeit from the standpoint of just one month in. Despite the research I did a few years ago for my book “English Arts & Crafts Furniture,” I didn’t become aware of Lawrence until Peter Follansbee suggested him for this series of profiles. Had I known of him five years earlier, I would certainly have wanted to include him in the book, along with a few others who keep Arts & Crafts traditions alive in silver, glass and wood.
Lawrence is a practicing craftsman in an unbroken line stretching back to designer Ernest Gimson. While engaged in the process we today would call “finding himself,” Gimson had taken some lessons in chairmaking from Herefordshire chairmaker Philip Clissett in 1890. Later, having established his workshops at Daneway House in the Cotswolds, west of London, Gimson encouraged Edward Gardiner, a young man in a family of sawyers who lived nearby, to learn to make chairs. Gardiner later moved to Warwickshire, where Lawrence’s father, Neville Neal, began learning from him in 1939. So I imagined that Lawrence would be full of stories, perhaps even willing to talk about such abstract notions as the meaning he finds in his work.
Nope. Instead, he was more chill about his life and work than pretty much anyone I can recall having interviewed, ever. At first I found his “Just the facts, ma’am” responses disappointing – where was the personal stuff, the color?
But as I worked in my own shop yesterday, my strength, along with my hemoglobin level, temporarily reduced by chemotherapy, the well-intentioned comments from some readers about the healing comforts of “making sawdust” jostled less happily around my head. It hit me how familiar, in the end, I found Lawrence’s “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts“; it brought so many of the people with whom I worked at small shops in England in the 1980s shooting right back. Look, this is my livelihood. Sure, it’s a gift to be able to turn a drawing into a practical three-dimensional object. But there’s no need to wax romantic. In my own woodworking-and-design-icon-deprived muddling way, I’ve spent most of my adult life as a cabinetmaker. It’s simply what I do. Yes, my work gives me great satisfaction, and it’s easy for me to go on (at length) about how wondrous it is to have any kind of practical skill. But on an hour-to-hour basis, I’ll tell you that spending a day amid the wood chips, whether I’m building a set of paint-grade bookcases or a solid walnut sideboard with hand-cut joinery throughout, is work, not something I’m inclined to romanticize. Amid my frustration at my reduced productivity, Lawrence’s low-key attitude quickly turned into balm for my soul.
Lawrence was born in Stockton, Warwickshire (pronounced “Warrick-shirr”), in 1951 and has spent most of his life firmly rooted there. His father, Neville Neal, was a chairmaker; his mother was a housewife. He has a younger sister, Janice.
When Lawrence was a boy, Neville spent his days working at Gardiner’s Warwickshire workshop, but he had a shop of his own in an outbuilding at the Neal family home, a “pretty brick cottage” built in 1843. The same outbuilding had housed Neville’s grandfather’s business, a barbershop. Lawrence went out to play with tools whenever his dad was there; he remembers a shavehorse and a lathe, a small bench and “a big sash cramp he’d put the chairs together with.”
After Gardiner died in 1958, Neville stayed on at his mentor’s shop for a couple of years. When another workshop became available in 1960, Neville took it over. It’s where Lawrence works today.
Neville and Victor Neal, Lawrence’s father and grandfather, respectively, in Edward Gardiner’s workshop during the 1950s.
Lawrence left school at 15, without taking GCSE or O-Level exams. He went straight into the chairmaking business, working with his father and a fellow who wove rush seats. “It was taken for granted that I would carry on with the chairmaking trade,” he says. Chairmaking had become part of the family; sometimes his granddad came over and joined them in the small workshop.
“I suppose I took the easy option,” he goes on, though he may be the only one alive who would call his life course “the easy option.”
“I’ve always enjoyed working with wood and any tools, really, so it wasn’t a problem going into the family business. My parents had to keep an eye on me when I was a kid, because I was forever getting into the tools and modifying the furniture in the house if I got half a chance!” One day his mother caught him “sandpapering the Welsh dresser, which didn’t please her too much.”
Lawrence in the ’70s, on a ferry from Harwich (pronounced “Harritch”) to Hook of Holland.
Lawrence takes the making of a chair through the entire process, from tree to finished seat. Early on, he felled his own trees, though he has not personally cut down any trees for chairmaking in many years. He and his father had an arrangement with the owner of a nearby woodlot; they’d choose a tree, fell it and take it to be sawn and dried. He still gets ash from woods near his home and has several people he calls on as additional sources. Sometimes he goes farther afield, within a radius of about 50 miles – to the Cotswolds in one direction, the Malvern Hills another. In addition to ash, he builds chairs in English brown oak, which he buys from a local timberyard.
He’ll select a tree and the sawmill will slice it into planks. Starting with green planks, Lawrence breaks the material down with a circular saw, then cuts it into smaller blanks. He turns the back legs, boils them, then leaves them in the bending frames for around a week. Next he saws the wood for slats; he planes the slats to thickness, boils and bends them, then mortises the back legs to accept the slats. He starts by drilling a row of holes, then trims them by hand with a chisel. Next he might do the spars (stretchers) and seat rails. He turns the former on the lathe and shaves the seat rails on the shavehorse, then dries them “properly” over the stove until he has the chair ready to assemble.
Lawrence used hide glue when he first started out; there was always a glue pot on the stove. Now he uses PVA. (This is the kind of disclosure that warms my heart.) He finishes the chairs and weaves the seats himself. Most chairs get a wax polish; Lawrence and his father used to make their own, from beeswax and turpentine, but he says “it was sticky, to be honest, and particularly ash chairs, which are light colored, tends to [collect] dust and dirt, which makes them look a bit grubby.” Today he uses a commercially produced wax made by Myland’s. Some customers want their chairs stained to match other furniture; recently, some have asked him to paint them grey. He prefers to leave the wood natural with a clear finish.
Rush for seat weaving.
He gathers rush from local rivers, mainly the Avon, harvesting between mid-June and mid-August. I asked whether he had to get permission from local government authorities. “We just ask the farmer,” he replied. “The river authorities and all that don’t seem to bother with us at all. You’re not really doing any harm, because [the rush] just grows back the following year.” He twists the strands of rush for the seat’s top side and edges, then weaves them around and around the frame “until there’s a seat.” Like you do.
Lawrence has spent the last 30 years with his partner, Alwyn. She worked at a solicitor’s firm (a law office) until she retired. “She likes life in the village,” Lawrence says, “the various clubs, things like ‘Knit and Natter’ (known in the States as ‘Stich ‘n’ Bitch’), the Women’s’ Institute, walking clubs and so on. There’s quite a lot going on, really, but COVID has put a stop to that.” Stockton’s population is about 1,000; its economy was long based on a combination of farming and two cement works, which took advantage of the plentiful area limestone. Many of the village houses were originally built for cement factory workers.
Lawrence and Alwyn have “quite a lot” of his chairs “scattered about the house.” He considers the chairs “very comfortable,” not least thanks to their woven rush seats.
None of Lawrence’s children is interested in going into chairmaking, though he says his middle son, Daniel, who works in digital marketing, has been getting into woodwork of late. Lawrence’s daughter, Laura, works at the solicitor’s office where Alwyn used to work. His eldest child, Joe, was a musician; Joe died in 2018.
Even Lawrence, who wants the craft to continue, describes his career in chairmaking as “almost more by accident.” The craft, he says, “could easily have died out at some point. A lot of [credit for its survival] is down to Edward Gardiner. He struggled to find work in the ’20s and ’30s. He’d started with Ernest Gimson in the late 1890s. He went back to [his] family sawmill during the First World War, then returned to chairmaking following Gimson’s death.” Neville, Lawrence’s dad, started with Gardiner in 1939, left when conscripted, but went back after his time in the army. “Since my dad took over in 1960, there’s been plenty of work,” Lawrence says. “There was a bit of a craft revival in the ’60s, and from there on it’s not been difficult to find work really, at all.”
Neville Neal in the 1980s.
Lawrence has trained a couple of apprentices, Sam Cooper and Richard Platt. That project began when a friend, Hugo Burge, offered to sponsor two apprentices; he paid them while Lawrence trained them to build chairs for his customers. Hugo lives at Marchmont House near the village of Greenlaw in Berwickshire (“Berrick-shirr”), Scotland; his property has several outbuildings that he has turned into creative spaces. When Richard and Sam left following the onset of the pandemic in the spring of 2020, they opened their own workshops, so they’ve been in business nearly a year. While Lawrence appreciated the opportunity to pass his skills on, he missed building chairs himself while training his apprentices – all he had time for was prepping and planning. “It was a bit strange, really,” he remarks about that time.
Lawrence has no plan to take on other full-time apprentices; he’s unwilling to commit another two or three years. Instead, he says, “I’m enjoying working by myself.” He gets by on a government pension and doesn’t “desperately need” to make a lot of chairs, so once again he’s enjoying the process of making.
He and Alwyn live in a modern house, built in the ’70s. They sold the family cottage – neither he nor his sister wanted to live there.
These days Lawrence gets a lot of repeat orders from families who bought chairs in the past. Other orders come from parents who want to buy chairs as a wedding gift for their children. In recent years, he’s also received plentiful work through interior designers, a phenomenon he attributes in large part to the internet. Then again, it’s a nice echo of how those we now know as luminaries of Arts & Crafts design – the Voyseys, Barnsleys, Gimson and their peers – sent prospective patrons or clients who had attended their lectures or seen their work published in magazines to trusted workshops.
To learn more about Lawrence’s chairmaking, see this video and this one. Also check him on Instagram, where he shares images of covet-able chairs, along with some amazing historical photos of his forebears at work.
Neville Neal weaving a seat in 1971. Lawrence is in the background.
