A family case. In the kitchen of Fritz Lieber and Donald Maxwell we used architectural butt hinges salvaged from Fritz’s grandparents’ house. In partnership with architectural knobs, which we used for doors and drawers, the over-sized hardware gives the design a vaguely Alice-in-Wonderland look. Spectrum Creative Group
If you had told me in 2007 that Lost Art Press was going to publish a book on kitchens, my 2007 self would have been skeptical. Kitchen books are usually put out by imprints that specialize in home and interior design. They require both a deep knowledge of the topic, plus a deep photographic well of example kitchens.
Plus these books encourage readers to be shamefully wasteful: Let’s rip out your five-year-old kitchen and put in a spectacular new one.
After talking to Nancy Hiller for a few minutes about her thoughts on a kitchen book, however, I was immediately sold. Nancy laid out a book that was in opposition to most kitchen design books on the market.
• She encourages you to explore clues in your house to create a kitchen that looks correct in your home’s historical context.
• She shows how you can work with existing floorplans, cabinets and materials to make your kitchen beautiful without sending hundreds of yards of waste to the landfill.
• And she provides professional and practical information on how you can do this work yourself.
“Kitchen Think” is the culmination of Hiller’s life as a professional furniture maker, cabinet maker and kitchen designer. It’s a sprawling, 369-page look at an important (and expensive) room in your house from a perspective that is rarely heard.
And readers have responded to Nancy’s voice. Though the book has been out since only June 2020, it has become one of our bestselling books of all time (see the list here).If you have been thinking about ripping out your entire kitchen, you might want to think again.
— Christopher Schwarz
The following is excerpted from “Kitchen Think,” by Nancy R. Hiller.
Hinges are more than a means of hanging doors. They contribute significantly to a kitchen’s look. In principle you can use any type of hinge for kitchen cabinet doors, but this section will focus on those that are most common.
Butt Hinges Doors on traditional kitchen cabinets were inset and typically hung on butt or butterfly hinges. Let’s start with the former. Butt hinges come in several varieties. There are extruded brass butts (known in Britain as solid drawn brass butts) with fixed pins and loose-pin butts that allow you to separate a door from its cabinet by simply removing the pin, leaving the hinge leaves in place. All traditional butt hinges are made to be mortised into the edge of the face frame (if there is one) and door, though in British cabinetry it is not uncommon to find them let only into the door; in these cases the cabinet leaf is simply screwed to the face frame stile.
Two kinds of butt hinge. An extruded butt with a fixed pin, right, and a butt hinge with loose pin, left.
Alternatively, you can use salvaged architectural hinges that were originally made for use with full-size house doors. Yes, they’re over-sized for most kitchen cabinets, but there are times when this kind of exaggerated scale packs a stylistic punch that no conventionally sized hardware can.
Easier going. Loose-pin butt hinges are easier to use, in many circumstances, because they allow you to remove a door without removing the entire hinge. One leaf stays on the door, the other on the cabinet, while you take the door to your bench (or outside, if you’re working on a jobsite) to plane off an extra 1/32″.
Another kind of butt is the adjustable, no-mortise hinge. This hinge is designed to resemble a traditional butt, with or without decorative finials, but is screwed to the surface of the door and face frame, the idea being that it is far quicker to install and requires fewer tools and lesser skill. The drawback, at least in my opinion, is that these hinges are a poor imitation of real butts; they look under-scaled. And to any craftsperson, they suggest an easy way out. That said, they do offer a relatively decent traditional butt hinge look and can make a set of cabinets significantly more affordable when the client or homeowner is on a tight budget.
Easy way out. Many cabinetmakers use adjustable surface-mounted butt hinges to save on labor.
Butterfly Hinges In the early 20th century, as companies turned out large numbers of cabinets, it became clear that inset doors came with their own built-in problems, the greatest being that they require a bit of skill to install well. On any cabinetry supplied with doors already hung – Hoosier cabinets are an ideal example – the tendency of doors to bind when cabinets were delivered to real-world locations became an even more pressing issue; the cabinets were sold with the claim that they were readily affordable and ready to use. So it was not surprising to me, as a cabinetmaker, to find in the course of my research on Hoosier cabinets that the largest manufacturer of these kitchen furnishings pretty quickly switched to half-inset (also known as half-overlay) doors. They marketed this as an improvement on the grounds that the resulting lip would keep dust from getting into the cabinet through the gaps in traditional inset doors.
Fill the gap. half-inset doors on a reproduction Hoosier cabinet.
Butterfly hinges have been used since the 19th century, if not before, and were widely used into the 1930s. Their popularity comes and goes with changes in decorating fashions. For a decade or so in the early 2000s there was a wide range of designs and finishes available, but ever since mid-century modern became the new “it girl” and gave “old-house” styles the boot, those of us who appreciate early 20th-century architecture have been reduced to choosing from a few reproduction designs offered by reputable manufacturers. One solution to this diminished variety is to look for antique hinges at salvage yards, antique shops and online.
Surface treatment. A fold-back hinge on a cabinet I made for our former kitchen, based loosely on details from Hoosier cabinets. The hinges came from Kennedy Hardware (kennedyhardware.com). Spectrum Creative Group
A variant on the older-pattern butterfly hinge is the offset butterfly hinge, designed for use with half-inset doors. And there are other variants on this one, some Art Deco-inspired, others the fold-back hinges used on certain Hoosier-type cabinets.
Deco detail. These streamline-style hinges are a Deco-era classic, though historically they were most often plated with chrome. Photo courtesy of House of Antique Hardware
3/8″ Inset Hinges From the mid- through late-20th century another type of hinge was widely used for kitchen doors. The “3/8″ inset” hinge came (and is still available) in a few patterns, the most distinctive being a sort-of bullet/streamline design. This type of hinge is available in free- or self-closing forms. It is extremely simple to install, with one caveat: You must allow enough space in the rabbet around the door’s perimeter to account for the distance by which the hinge will push the hinge stile away from the face frame. The only circumstances in which I would recommend using these hinges today are when replacing a broken hinge or adding new doors to an existing kitchen full of cabinets hung on them or, of course, if you are recreating a period-authentic kitchen in movie set or a house that originally had them.
Cabinets for everyman. Many mass-produced kitchen cabinets in the 1940s and ’50s had doors on half-inset hinges such as this one, still produced today.
European Hinges European hinges were designed for use with European-style cabinets, also known as frameless cabinets. Underlying this system of cabinet building and installation is a desire to maximize efficiency by standardizing components based on 32mm (approximately 1-3/8″) increments.
European hinges come in a vast variety, each designed to work in a different application. Even so, most consist of just two basic parts – a hinge and a mounting plate.
A no-show hinge. To keep his cabinets as clean-lined as possible, Bruce Chaffin used hidden European hinges. The doors open and close by means of touch latches.
To make a simple matter slightly less so, European hinges also come in a variety specifically designed for use on cabinets with face frames; these have an integral mounting plate. But you don’t have to use this “face frame” hinge to use European hinges on cabinets with face frames; you can just as well use the two-part variety, provided that you choose the correct combination of hinge and mounting plate for your application.
Depending on which combination of hinge and mounting plate you use, these hinges can work with doors that are inset, half-inset or full overlay. And there are even more variations! A full-overlay door may overlay the cabinet face by 1/4″ or 1-1/4″, depending on the mounting plate you use. Doors can open 95° or as much as 165°. They can be free closing (these do not hold themselves closed but require a catch) or self-closing. Some are even available with a soft-close feature that shuts the door for you once you give it a gentle push. (Aside from their undeniable coolness, these are useful for keeping children from slamming their fingers in cabinets.)
Just the ticket. Lynette Breton found the best solution for her full-overlay doors is the XXI surface mount concealed hinge .
Despite the huge variety, all of these hinges have the same pattern for drilling the hinge cup mortise in the door: a hole drilled to the depth of the cup (about 1/2″) with a 35mm Forstner bit. There are two good reasons to choose European hinges in select applications. First, being invisible when a door is closed, they offer a clean look. If not seeing the hinges is important to your design, these may be your guys. Second, they offer adjustability in three planes, which makes fitting any kind of door – inset, half-inset or full overlay – ridiculously simple compared to using traditional butt hinges.
Specialty Hinges If knife hinges are your thing, there’s no reason why you can’t use those or any other type of hinge less commonly used for kitchen cabinets. In some applications where none of the conventional options will work, you just have to go looking for a special hinge.
Whenever I write, whether it’s a blog post, article, book or simple email to a friend, I’m thinking about what readers may make of my words – not only my words in a literal sense (especially when I use a term of art, a foreign name or a four-letter expression that starts with the letter F), but the points I aim to convey. As someone who was fortunate to have teachers who were strict about standards and liberal with criticism, I internalized the most challenging critiques that came my way, a practice that has served me well. Over the years I’ve augmented those critiques with thought-provoking comments from others, among them the kind of uncharitable characters who read everything with an arched brow and think they know the author’s mind better than she knows herself. (Really…just spare me.)
As the publication of “Shop Tails” nears,* I thought it would be helpful to answer a few questions from my inner dragonAva Hunting-Badcocke as a heads-up to those who may be interested in buying the book.
Dido, a kitten I adopted from a salvage yard.
I just saw that you identified your medical diagnosis as “adenoma of the pancreas” in one of your early chapters. Don’t you even know that the name of your disease is adenocarcinoma, not to be confused with the rarer form of pancreatic cancer, the neuroendocrine variety that killed Steve Jobs? How can you expect anyone to grant you a shred of credibility after reading that appalling mistake?
I make my share of mistakes. I cannot tell you how many times I read the manuscript, not to mention how many articles in medical journals I have read about pancreatic adenocarcinoma. And still I missed this poop pile while cleaning the yard. So now I’m covered in it. We will forewarn readers with a note on the ordering page.
Joey and Tony in the early daysof Tony’s regime.
Most publishers look for consistency in a manuscript – consistency in voice and chapter length, as well as spelling and punctuation. Your manuscript reads more like a lorry packed with the assorted contents of a shuttered Oxfam shop that’s spilt its load all across the motorway, leaving a trail of tacky Beatles portraits on velour, melamine ashtrays with burnt spots, hand-knitted Shetland jumpers, crotchless knickers and worn plimsolls with missing laces. The first few animal stories read as though they were written by a child. The rest are what we expect from you. Some of the chapters are 30 pages long, while others are only four – or in one case, two! What is that, even? How can a chapter be two pages long? I can’t believe that your publisher agreed to invest in this farce. — Miss Ava Hunting-Badcocke, 1973
Consistency may be overrated. I wrote the first few chapters from the perspective I recall as a child, when I lived with the animals in question: Sidney and Phoebe (both dogs), Binky (a mouse), then David (a guinea pig). One pre-publication reader described these chapters as “sweet.” The sweetness vanishes with “Oscar”; he was my first dog as an adult, so the narrative voice reverts to that of the adult who wrote the first two introductory chapters.
My goal is to convey important information and entertaining stories, and sometimes introduce a reader to new perspectives on familiar subjects. I’m writing about real life, and at least in my experience, real life is more like the contents of that overturned lorry than the polished near-perfection of your sitting room-turned-security–checkpoint-homework-checking station, with your line of girls and Gaston, your farting pug.**
My husband, Mark, with Henny.
I thought this was a book about animals and woodworking, but the first two chapters read like someone’s private cancer journal.
By the time Lost Art Press sent me a contract to publish this book, I’d been writing the stories about individual animals for about 15 years. My relationships with non-human animals have brought me comfort and joy (and the occasional heartbreak). They have also taught me important lessons about life and my relationships with my fellow human animals. What precipitated the contract was my diagnosis in November 2020, so as I began to work on the book as a project for publication, my mind went naturally to the circumstances that had prompted the opportunity.
When Christopher Schwarz was designing the book, I told him it would be fine with me if he wanted to excise the first two chapters, or parts thereof. I worried that there might be too much introspection and blow-by-blow accounting of what was going on in my head. He replied that he wanted to leave them in because they show how my mind works and add richness to the stories that follow. You can just skip those chapters and go straight to the animal tales if you’re so inclined. There will not be a test.
Edie’s puppy Poika looking like a sheared lamb.
I see you’re trying to con us into believing that blurb from “Edith Sarra of Harvard and Indiana University” is legit. We know the two of you are friends, and we’re here to out you.
No one is trying to pull the wool over your eyes. Edie is one of my dearest friends. We met in 2006, by which time I’d been hearing for years from my friend Ben Sturbaum that I just had to meet this woman who lives in his favorite house in the world because we would love each other. And love her I do. However, I didn’t ask her for what publishers call a “comment”; that blurb is an excerpt from a personal note she sent to me after she had read the manuscript of “Shop Tails” a few times. She’d been interested in the project for as long as she had known of it, because she, too, is a serious lover of animals (especially dogs, but don’t tell anyone). My friend Edie has delivered some world-class withering comments, sometimes by saying nothing, so I trust her not to be giving me an easier time than she would give most other people. She implicitly affirmed this by granting us permission to quote her remarks as a blurb for the book.
William reading the comics.
So, Lost Art Press gave you a contract because you had cancer?
Pardon me while I wipe the tears of laughter out of my eyes. I know… I’m not supposed to be laughing, right? Because I have an incurable life-threatening illness. But why go on living at all if I can’t keep laughing?
Seriously, though, I get your point. When I sent my pitch to Chris and told him that writing this book could provide the motivation I needed in order to face chemotherapy, I added that I was simply stating the truth, not inviting a pity party or being emotionally manipulative. Or something like that. I trusted that he would get where I was coming from, because he is a straight shooter. I was relieved that his response included something along the lines of Lost Art Press does not engage in pity publishing. So, yeah, no.
A plank chair seat with spindles and legs sawed off and repainted to make a sign. Possibly Pennsylvania-German. Photo: Garth’s Auctions, Columbus, Ohio.
While working on a research project earlier this year I had the opportunity to delve into 19th-century business directories. For some tradesmen using newspaper ads and business directory listings was the only effective means of advertising their goods and services to the public. For those newly arrived in town the local business directory provided maps, locations of city offices, churches and where to find merchants selling all manner of goods. For present-day researchers, from economists to those tracing their family history, old business directories provide valuable information on American life from the late 18th century to early in the 20th century.
A business directory for New York City in 1794 included a list of goods on which a customs tax had to be paid. An exception was made for the tools belonging to persons involved in one of the mechanical trades. This was one way to attract badly needed skilled mechanics to the new Republic.
Let’s take a look through advertisements placed by tradesmen associated with woodworking. The ads are from the 1830s to early 1880s with the majority from the “western cities” of Cincinnati, Columbus, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. All business directories were found in the collections of public and university libraries.
Paid advertisements were usually in a section towards the back of a directory. The cost of an ad depended on the size of the ad space. Consequently, a small business (and most were small businesses) needed to cram in all the necessary details in a space that might measure only 1 inch by three inches. Fortunately, there were numerous fonts and font sizes to jazz up their ads and grab the attention of the public. The combination of fonts and stock images used in these old ads is one feature that makes them so attractive to today’s woodworkers (and others).
A checklist of items to put in an ad include the tradesman’s name, business name, location, goods and services provided and references. Some directions on how the find the business (two doors down, westside, next to, between) were particularly helpful in the crowded conditions of the city. Phrases that communicate the tradesmen is ready, willing and able to meet the needs of a customer include “prepared to” “at the shortest notice” and “always on hand.”
Joseph Stringer (top-left) let his Cincinnati customers know he was previously a foreman at a premium saw manufacturer in New York. He is a “practical” saw maker and repairer indicating he will make or repair saws that fit the needs of the customer. The last lines of the ads are worth reading if you are looking for a job, can only afford a refurbished file or saw. First Premium Saw Manufactory of Cincinnati (bottom-right) has some weighty references. Mitchell & Rammelsberg made all varieties of furniture and at one time was considered one of the largest furniture factories in the world. Mudge & Clawson made over a hundred different styles of bedsteads.
It never hurts to have your name match your business.
Stock images, such as the handplane, made it easier for the woodworking customer find a merchant. The ad at the top-left is from a Cincinnati newspaper. After E. F. Seybold had a fire (or fire spread to his premises) it was a matter of urgency to let the public know his new location and that he had stock on hand. Business directories also helped customers find merchants after fires or other situations forced merchants to relocate.
Stout & Richey of Louisville, Kentucky advertised in a directory that seemed to allow only business-card type ads. Note that A.B. Seidenstricker of Baltimore is the successor to well-known planemaker Phillip Chapin. In the small print at the bottom of his add F.B. Marble of Cleveland boasts he can make BETTER tools at cheaper prices “as any establishment west of New York, or east of the Rocky Mountains.” That’s a lot of chutzpah and about 1800 miles (on today’s roadways).
Wood and metal compass from a toolmaker’s shop. It would have been displayed inside the shop. American, late 18th century to early 19th century. Photo: 1stdibs.
This is a well-ordered ad using its products to form a border. It also has the power of three: three products, three owners and three consecutive lots on Biddle Street. It makes me wonder if bolts were kept at No. 17, nuts at No.19 and washers at No.21 (and now you know why they would never have hired me). Richard H. Cole was granted a patent in 1857 for a machine that fabricated metal nuts. Denizens of St. Louis will recognize the names of the other two proprietors. C.P. Chouteau is likely a member of the family that helped found St. Louis. J.J. O’Fallon is likely the son of John O’Fallon. O’Fallon, senior, was a nephew of William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) and, after a career in the U.S. Army, made St. Louis his home and was involved in the expansion of the railroads.
The image of the adze draws the eye to Osborn & Swan’s ad and the name brands of tools on offer. Samuel Worl, cooper of Pittsburgh offered a full line of products. With his business located near the convergence of three rivers, including the Ohio River and steamboat traffic, he could take and fill orders from customers outside of Pittsburgh.
One 1844 business directory featured histories and advertisements from what it termed the cities of the Mississippi Valley. It was essentially a tour from the large cities that were along the Ohio River (or had access via canal) and those cities along the Mississippi River. The last city was, of course, New Orleans. Antognini, like many French craftsmen of the city, had his advertisements offered in French and English. However, he is a bit sly in offering one particular item to only his French-speaking customers (and you will have to figure that out for yourself). But, billiard tables? Yes, let’s not forget the importance of a game of billiards, fine liquor and the opportunity to make a business deal. Billiards was a popular pastime and Monsieur Roubo had a whole section on games tables. Plate 255 below.
As for hat forms, every man and woman wore a hat. The wealthy citizens of New Orleans looked forward to receiving news and drawings of the latest fashions from Paris. Antognini was probably one of several businesses that supplied hat forms to the hatters and milliners of New Orleans. By 1861 Antognini had gained a partner and was still in business but seems to have discontinued making hat forms.
19th-century French wooden hat form comprised of two pieces. Photo: Elizabeth Street Gallery, New York.
Of the three coachmakers and blacksmiths on this page my favorite is Guillaume Retaud. Monsieur Retard pays for only what is necessary and he basically says “I do what it says.”
Two Columbus, Ohio blacksmiths. Mr. Bevilhimer kindly thanks his customers and offers reassurance that he will be lighting a new fire to keep up with his orders. It’s possible he may have had to delay taking new orders until he cleared a backlog. Fred Litchford, on the other hand, wants to sell his business. I checked a later Columbus directory and found he was still in business and he was Black. He continued his business and eventually his son worked with him. I had to include this Baltimore blacksmith because he just goes whole hog with his inventory and, best of all, he was at the Sign of the Bellows and Anvil. Imagine that sign.
Left: a tin-mounted wooden bellows sign for a blacksmith. Photo: Weschler’s Auctions, Rockville, Maryland. Right: a tin anvil and hammer sign. Photo: Thomston Place Auction Galleries, Maine.
Thomas J. Magee was patriotic, a punster, or both. When applied to a ladder, “E Pluribus Unum” is very clever. Magee was first listed in the Cincinnati business directory in 1856. Two years later his carpenter and builder listing expanded to include ladder manufacturer. By their nature, a ladder ad should be tall and this ad fits the bill. Magee also doesn’t get to wordy. If you wanted carpentry and jobbing work it would be done, etc., etc. His last listing was in 1860. A five-year run for a business was not unusual. Magee may have moved on to another of the “western” cities or he may have succumbed to illness or injury.
I chose these two Columbus hardware stores because of their signs: the gilt padlock and the gilt broad axe. After putting them together I noticed they were next door to each other! Both the padlock and broad axe were traditional signs used by hardware shops. It must have been quite a sight to see the two gilt signs side-by-side and shining in the sunlight while the shop owners glared at each other. As you can see a good old fashioned hardware store carried everything.
Both signs are from 19th-century hardware stores. Photos: Skinner Auctions, Massachusetts.
All of the river cities and their merchants were of great importance to the pioneers that chose to move west. They were the transfer points when traveling by boat and the last large towns or cities before overland travel into the wilderness. St. Louis and the adjacent area was the jumping-off point for overland travel to Oregon and other parts of the West Coast. It was the last place for repairs and resupply. Hardware stores were often gathering places where the westbound traveler could shop, get directions to a specialized tradesman and hear the latest news.
Several St. Louis business directories gave merchants the option of using highly detailed images and colored paper. Paper colors were yellow, green, blue and this pinkish tone chosen by J.W. Tyzack. Tyzack also paid for the full image (the smaller central square portion was also an option). Who needs words when you have a picture of many of the tools used in the mechanical trades, on the farm and in the home. It’s all there including a pocketknife.
In the top portion Herman H. Meier, another hardware proprietor, advises he has taken over from Thomas Meier. He selected a very nice border of tools and implements—all is good. The following year he has an option to have his ad on color paper. He chose green, perhaps because his shop was on the corner of Green and Broadway. He has added the words Hardware and Cutlery at each end to make his ad more distinctive. Now, imagine his consternation when the new directory is published and his decorative tool border is upside down and backwards.
Three neat and orderly turners. Daniel Williams’ ad in the center is of particular note as he keeps a tree nail yard and makes trunnels (also known as trennels or trenails).
Siedhoff & Camp chose green paper and in case you didn’t notice they turn chair stuff, boring chair stuff, chair stuff and do turning in general.
In the gallery are several more tradesmen’s signs.
–Suzanne Ellison (all typos and other errors were caused by Titivillus, explanation here.)
The back of the chairmaker sign at the top of the blog post. Photo: Garth’s Auction, Columbus, Ohio.
Photo: Robert Young Antiques, London.
A French hardware shop sign dated 1834. Robert Young Antiques, London.
A wooden axe sign from a Kentucky hardware store. Skinner Auctions.
A blacksmith’s sign with an assortment of his wares. Skinner Antiques.
Another variation of a blacksmith’s sign. Skinner Auctions.
A wooden sign, either for a business selling these goods or a lumberjack. Jeffrey S. Evans, Mt. Crawford, Virginia.
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.
Proper proportions. This Shaker classic is one of the best examples of how frame components can influence the character of a cabinet. While the board between the doors does not exactly qualify as a face frame stile, that is one of its functions. Contrast its extreme width with the single-board thickness of the rails between the drawers. (Private collection, Paul Rocheleau)
Unlike most kitchen design books, “Kitchen Think” is a woodworker’s guide to designing and furnishing the kitchen, from a down-to-the-studs renovation to refacing existing cabinets. And she shows you how it can be done without spending a fortune or adding significantly to your local landfill.
Yes, there are hundreds of pretty full-color photos of well-designed kitchens, which are organized into 24 case studies throughout the book. They range from the sculptural (kitchens by Johnny Grey and Wharton Esherick) to kitchens of a more recognizable form.
But there’s also a heavy dose of practical instruction: how to build cabinets efficiently, how to make a basic kitchen island, how to build a wall-hung plate rack. Plus butt-saving advice that comes only from experience – like how to maximize space in inside corners, how to scribe cabinets and countertops into odd spaces and how to make sure you’ve left ample space for hardware.
All of this is built on a foundation of research into kitchens from the past. Hiller’s historical perspective on design might just change your mind about what makes a good kitchen.
Widths of door stiles & rails Bottom rails are almost always wider than top rails on old cabinet and furniture doors. Sometimes stiles are the same width as the top rail (before material is removed for fitting the doors), sometimes not – and sometimes they are dramatically different.
Dimensions of face frame stiles and rails (in addition to where they appear) For example, a true period look for cabinets predating the widespread use of mechanical drawer slides requires intermediate drawer rails. Even if you plan to mount your drawers on full-extension slides, you should incorporate rails between them to evoke the look of those that once supported web frames.
Style is cyclical. The pulls on these metal cabinets found in a garage inspired those Lynette Breton made for her mid-century style kitchen. She made the concave handle detail with a router with a shop-made jig, using a rub collar and core box bit. Before using the router, she bored out the center on the drill press to give the bit a place to plunge into. The core box bit removed the remainder of the waste. The process was more nerve-racking than it might have been because she did this routing after painting the cabinets. The pulls in the center are Bakelite with chrome from Vintage Hardware in Port Townsend, Wash. (vintagehardware.com). (Margaret Stevens Becksvoort)
Hardware What kind of hinges were used, and how were they attached? If the doors were hung on butt hinges, were they mortised into the door and face frame, or only into the door? What is the length of the hinge? How wide are the leaves? Are the pins removable or fixed, and do they have finials? What is the finish?
Hardware position Note the distance of the top and bottom (and center, if applicable) hinges from the ends of the door. Note the position of drawer pulls, doorknobs or latches; door hardware was commonly installed approximately halfway or two-thirds to three-quarters of the way up on base cabinet doors and similarly spaced in the opposite direction for upper doors. They were not usually located in the upper or lower corner, as is typical of cabinet doors today.
Set correctly. When we recreated the pantry in Lauri Hafvenstein’s 1917 house, I followed the original pattern Lauri had seen in a neighbor’s kitchen, with inset doors and half-inset drawer faces.(Lauri Hafvenstein)
Are doors and drawers inset, overlay or half inset? Drawer faces were sometimes half inset even though the doors in the same set of cabinets were fully inset.
Moulding profiles It should go without saying that moulding profiles are important. They can vary enormously and are one of the most distinctive and delightful details in a period kitchen. If you cannot replicate a profile yourself, you can usually have it done in the species of your choice by a millwork shop willing to custom-grind knives. Just be sure you order extra, as there will usually be a hefty set-up charge along with the grinding fee, and different batches can have dimensional variations invisible to the eye but great enough to cause headaches during installation.
Edge treatment of half inset drawer faces These may be eased, quarter-round, beveled or moulded.
Graduated. Notice the proportions of door elements in this elevation of a pantry “dresser” from an 1899 carpenter’s guide. (A gift to the author from Charles Bickford)
Proportions of graduated drawers Along with the proportions of face frames and door components, one of the least-noticed and most critical aspects of historic kitchens is the proportions of drawer faces. Many cabinetmakers make the mistake of building all the drawer faces in a stack to the same size. Not only does this look terrible, because when viewed from above (i.e., from normal standing height), the bottom drawer will inevitably look smaller than the rest, and so, out of scale. It’s also not how drawers were traditionally sized. You can make as many adverse comparisons as you like between 19th-century cabinetmakers and the furniture made by those who worked in the golden zone of northeastern American states during the late 18th century, but even oft-maligned Victorians worked with a tradition grounded in classical proportions. This was one of the first and most important lessons I learned from Roy Griffiths in 1980.
Toe kicks. Flush toe kicks were an option in 1927, and still are today. (1927 Universal millwork catalog)
Toe kicks Are they flush (i.e., does the bottom rail of the face frame go all the way to the floor) or recessed? If the toe kick is partially recessed – i.e., if the face frame stiles extend down to the floor with inset toe kicks between them – note the rhythm of this variation. In some cases the stiles are full-length only at the end of each cabinet run, with the kick recessed everywhere else. In others, the stiles may run down to the floor on each cabinet.
I had to include this Baltimore blacksmith because he just goes whole hog with his inventory and, best of all, he was at the Sign of the Bellows and Anvil. Imagine that sign.
