I’ve seen a blurry photograph of a detail of Chester Cornett’s chairmaking workbench and read Michael Owen Jones’s description of the bench in “The Craftsman of the Cumberlands.” At the time I thought: That sounds like a Roman-style workbench.
And yesterday I found out that I was correct.
Brendan Gaffney and I visited the storeroom of the Mathers Museum of World Culture in Bloomington, Ind., to view artifacts related to Cornett. And we got more than we bargained for. In addition to some of Cornett’s traditional chairs and rockers, the Mathers also had Cornett’s incredible “bookcase rocker” (more on that from Brendan in a future entry), a chair made by Cornett’s grandfather, Cornett’s worn-down Pexto drawknife, his worn-out dumbhead shavehorse and his workbench.
Located on the top rack in the storeroom, the workbench is a segment of a log with four staked legs. The workholding consists of three pegs that Chester could wedge his work between – exactly as described by M. Hulot in his 18th-century book on turning and chairmaking.
I’m pretty sure that Cornett didn’t read Hulot. So it is an amazing thing to see this low Roman-style workbench made by a 20th century woodworker who lived in the wilds of Eastern Kentucky. Did he come up with the idea for the bench himself? Was it something he learned from his family members who also were chairmakers?
The bench is 11” wide at the top and the benchtop is 10” from the ground. The log segment is 4” thick at its thickest point and about 62” long. The four legs are about 1” to 1-1/4” thick and wide x 8” long (minus their tenons).
So this is just another data point showing that low workbenches, as described in “Ingenious Mechanicks,” haven’t disappeared.
The Playfair Hours, MSL/1918/475 fol 1r, French, 1480s. Copyright the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Medieval homes were sparsely furnished, and each piece usually would have more than one function. One of the intriguing bench styles that can be found in many manuscript images is the bench with a flip-able back rest. The form seems to have become popular in the early part of the 15th century.
The manuscript and the real thing. Top: February from the Hours of Henry VIII, Tours, MS H.8 fol 1v, France, ca. 1500. Morgan Library, New York. Bottom: Bank mit Faltwerk, Gothic, Kunstgewerbesammlungen, Berlin.
To make the bench even more useful, the base could be a storage chest. In manuscripts, the bench is normally seen in front of a fireplace. Warm up facing the fire, and when you were warm enough and it was time to dine, flip the backrest and face the table.
Décaméron de Boccace, MS 5070 réserve fol 314r, 15th c. Bibliothèque de Arsenal, Gallica BnF.
Banc à Tournis The France banc à tournis (or banc-tournis) typically has a thin backrest that turns inside the side panels. Although they are found in manuscripts, I did not find any French versions with the lower storage chest.
16th c. Northern France, probably Normandy, oak. Sotheby’s.
The side panels serve as the legs of the bench and often bear the only decorative element, in this case, linenfold carving.
16th c. Northern France, oak, from Chateau de Cornillon, Loire. Sotheby’s.
The pair above with carved panels on the side are a bit longer and a central support is added.
Here you can get a better look at two versions of the turning arm. The center dowel in the pivot does not pierce the side panel. In the (sharper) photo on the left it is easy to see how the side panel is constructed to include a vertical stop for the turning arm of the backrest.
Saint Barbara, 1438, by Robert Campin, Flemish. Museo del Prado, Madrid.
Flemish artists were notoriously good at fine details. In this painting which is the left side of the Werl Altarpiece, Saint Barbara sits on another French-style banc à tournis. In this case the backrest is an six-sided bar with a metal turning arm and mounted on the outside of the side panel.
Banc à tournis, early 15th century from Tour sans peur, Paris.
The open sides of this bench preclude mounting the turning arm on the inside. Another feature of these benches is a footrest. They can be hard to see in paintings due to the voluminous clothing worn by the bench occupants. The footrest is also one of those pieces that gets broken off – or intentionally taken off – as these benches moved through the centuries.
A comparison of the metal turning arm in the painted version and the real thing.
In the Sotheby’s notes about the two benches from Northern France it gave the 1589 inventory of a banc à tournis owned by Catherine de Medici: ‘un banc à dossier mobile e pouvant faire face à la chiminée ou tourner le dos.’ At the time (2007) this was the last known record of one of these benches.
Styrcsitten The German version of these benches are the strycsitten, identified by the turning mechanism mounted atop the side panel.
As with the French benches, there are variations in the side panels, decorative elements and whether there is a storage chest.
Pilgrimage to Santiago Compostella, part of an altarpiece, 1460 by Friedrich Herlin. Archive Gerstenberg-ullsteinbild.
The pilgrims are sitting on a plain styrcsitten with a narrow backrest and we can definitely see the hinges of the chest.
Two paintings by Gabriel Mälesskircher from Munich. Left: Saint John the Evangelist, 1478, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Right: Mary Magdalene washes Christ’s feet, 1476, German National Museum, Nürnberg.
Based on his painting style, Mälesskircher was probably trained by Flemish masters. He shows us two strycsitten without chests, but with great decorative work on the side panels.
Tirol Landesmuseum, Innsbruck, Austria. Photo from St. Thomas Guild blog.
A plain bench with storage chest. The backrest is wider than what is usually seen in manuscripts and paintings and would likely be more comfortable.
Photo from St. Thomas Guild blog.
This second bench from the 15th century has a beautifully-carved backrest and, as you can see, a storage chest. There are color photos floating around that may or may not be the same bench. I have seen notes that the pictured bench may have been destroyed in WWII.
Mälesskircher’s painting vs. an actual bench (photo from St. Thomas Guild blog).
The turning mechanism of the strycsitten sits on the central point of the side panel. The two outside points serve as the rests. Variations will be the depth of the curves and height of the three points, and carvings or piercings on the side panels.
If you are shopping around for a flip-able bench to make and so far you aren’t wowed by the banc à tournis or strycsitten, let’s go north.
Vändbänken
From Hälsingland/Dalarna, 1800s. Photo Stadsauktion Sundsvall.
The vändbänk is a Swedish bench with some interesting details. No side panels to worry about, as much turning detail as one might want and a very cool turning mechanism.
These benches were painted in the folk tradition and the seat might have an apron. In the bench above you can still see remnants of paint. The apron is carved with a leaf pattern.
And here is how it turns. I don’t know the Swedish term for the turning arm so I am naming it Thor’s Hammer. Many examples have the same staked legs in what looks like the start of a ballet second position demi-plié. These benches have personality and turnings, lots of turnings.
1800s, collection of the Nordiska Museet. Photo by Skansen Digitalt Museum.
Another variation is a fence-like apron attached to one side.
When the backrest is turned to the other side the apron is left behind. Here you also get an idea of the heft of the burly turning arm.
Kalmer läns museum.
This bench appears to be older than the previous two and is from Norra Bäckbo. In the local dialect it is known as a rall. No turnings but a nicely figured backrest.
Dated 1680 from Junkboda Bygdea. Collection of Nordiska museet.
In the Junkboda Bygdea dialect this bench is a brudsärla and has a heavier build. The legs extend above the level of the seat and act as the stops for the backrest. The backrest is more solid than previous examples and has wonderful quatrefoil piercings while the apron has simple beading. The turning mechanism is the same but without any apparent decoration.
Two more non-Swedish benches with a similar turning arm are from Hungary and Russia.
Dated late 19th century.
The Hungarian bench variation has staked stick legs instead of the more substantial Swedish bench legs. The seat is also less substantial but has a nice frilly apron. The backrest has deeply carved and pierced panels. This may have had some repainting, however, it still gives us a good idea of the folk painting found in Eastern Europe.
This beefy Russian bench almost looks like a church pew, except for the legs. The back rest has a carved and pierced design that can also be found in textiles.
The bench shows another variation of how to turn the backrest.
With some similarity to the German styrcsitten the backrest turns atop the side panel and together they give a solid side to the bench end.
The St. Thomas Guild has been exploring the strycsitten for several years and they have a ton of photos of the benches (and other furniture) they have found. You can take a trip over to their blog here. If you get lost they have an alphabetic directory that will help you get redirected on their blog.
As with many folk crafts this bench is disappearing. Whatever your preference in style or decoration I urge you to consider making one of these versatile benches.
There are a few more examples of these flip-able benches in the gallery.
— Suzanne Ellison
16th century, Dutch.
16th (?) century, French. Linenfold side panels, noted central supports.
French, 15th century from Chateau de Martainville, Normandy.
Swedish, 1700s (?), from Kalmer läns museum.
Swedish, the other side.
Swedish, 1700s. Photo by Berit Bryntse.
Hungarian. Note similar backrest decoration as the Swedish bench.
Another Hungarian. Shapely turning arm. Did this backrest come from another bench?
Circa 1500, oak chair version of strycsitten with chest. Rijksmuseum.
Top: House of the Vettii, Pompeii, March 2017. Bottom: Saalburg, Germany, June 2017.
This time last year Chris Schwarz and Narayan Nayar were in Naples, Italy. In between consuming vast quantities of pizza they made a visit to Pompeii to study and photograph a fresco depicting a Roman workbench (Daedalus and Queen Pasiphae are also in the picture). Not long after Chris returned from Italy his limited edition letterpress book, “Roman Workbenches” went to press. And in June, Chris and his friends Görge Jonuschat and Bengt Nilsson traveled to the Roman fort at Saalburg to meet with archaeologist Rüdiger Schwarz to study and photograph two extant Roman workbenches.
The transformation of the planned expanded version of “Roman Workbenches” into “Ingenious Mechanicks” started in mid-July. Things, lots of things, started turning up in our research. While putting together a couple blog posts on Latin American workbenches during the Colonial era, this 18th-century workbench from Colombia turned up.
San Jose carpentero, artist unknown, Museo de Arte Religioso, Duitama, Boyaca, Colombia.
One of the mysteries of the Saalburg workbench is the two dovetail-shaped notches found on the long side of the bench. Half a world away, the Colombia bench had a similar notch and was equally perplexing. Was it for riving, securing a piece for tenoning, a place for a jig or other device? A few days later a different notch showed up, this time from Italy.
San Giuseppe nella Botega di Falegname, 1640-1692, Francisco Refini. Fondazione Zeri Photo Archive, Bologna.
A notch on the end of the bench was not so unusual and was normally used for riving or tenoning. This image went into an ‘X-file’ until we had other images or information to help decipher the possible uses of the notch.
Mid-July was blazing hot and humid and as I ran workbench searches (in air-conditioned comfort) a flurry of images were turning up. Anything without a date, artist, title or location went into a ‘Find It’ file. I sent Chris pdfs of benches from Italy, Spain, Germany and other European countries. While trying to verify if one particular painting was Italian or Spanish and its physical location, I just stopped to take a good look at the detail. I was drawn to the toolbox to left of Saint Joseph.
The Dream of Saint Joseph, ca. 1700, Luca Giordano (Neopolitan), completed in Madrid. Indianapolis Museum of Art. Photo by Christopher Schwarz.
Next, because Chris and I have discussed baskets for tools, I took a look at the tool basket…and there it was. Holy Cow! At the end of the bench a wedge was in a notch. I sent this off the Chris. He had it one of the pdfs I sent but now I was sure he had not yet seen this detail.
Was this a wedge in a dovetail- shaped notch? Could it be used as a planing stop? Could the wedge be taken out and the notch used for tenoning or something else?
Chris was on his way out of town but quickly replied. He was stunned. Very soon after he returned from his trip he drove the two hours to Indianapolis to see the painting for himself. In the blog post he wrote about it he said he almost wet his pants. Huh. I am pretty sure, although he was over 500 miles from me, I heard him shriek like a little girl, a 6 foot-3 inch-ish little girl.
One detail, well to one side of a painting, opened the door to further workbench explorations and discoveries.
On the end: notch, wedge in notch.
One of the paintings in my ‘Find It’ file was found on a Spanish site. It turned out to be German, part of a ten-panel work by 16th-century artist Bernhard Strigel of Memmingen and in the collection of the German National Museum in Nürnberg. It has a squared notch on the long side of the bench the painting is dated in the same year as the Löffelholz Codex.
Top: Löffelholz Codex, 1505, Nürnberg. Bottom: Hans Kipferle guild table, 1561, Bolzano. Right: Holy Family, 1505-1506, Bernhard Strigel, Memmingen.
Two other images of workbenches with the straight-side and square notch have long been known to woodworkers: the Löffelholz Codex from Nürnberg and the guild table from Bolzano/Bozen.
Strigel’s painting helps to confirm the presence of the notch on workbenches, at least in this southwestern part of Germany and/or Löffelholz wasn‘t crazy. Additionally, the Hans Kipferle table tells us that a half-century later the side notch was still in use.
Map by Brendan Gaffney.
If we step back to the time of the Roman Limes Germanicus and the Roman road network you can see another dimension to the European workbenches with side notches: where the workbenches are located.
So what happened next? Chris went to the shop to try out the theory of the ‘notches and wedges’ on the Saalburg and Holy Roman (Löffelholz) workbenches.
Saalburg workbench. Dovetail-shaped notch ready to cut.
The side notches with the wedge in place serve as side stops for traverse planing.
Wedges in side notches and Roman iron planning stop in place.
On the Holy Roman workbench notches were cut on the end and one on the side.
The notch cuts in progress and the finished bench.
Several weeks before he finished “Ingenious Mechanicks” Chris invited some woodworker friends to a Benchfest. He challenged them to use and critique the three workbenches, French belly and shaving horse attachment that he built for the book. He took notes and Narayan Nayar took photos. The notches with wedges and the notch as vise (with a small wedge) worked beautifully. It was another example of a seemingly simple workbench feature having multiple uses in the shop.
Since the publication of “Roman Workbenches” and the Saalburg visit a cornucopia of workbench and workholding ideas have surfaced and are packed into the forthcoming “Ingenious Mechanicks.”
If you are still on the fence, undecided or torn about adding “Ingenious Mechanicks” to your library Chris will post a short video later in the week to illustrate some of the features of the workbenches.
Richard Jones’s opus on wood technology – “Cut & Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology” – is almost ready to go to the printer. There are just a few last-minute freak-outs to tend to today. And wrapping up the cover, which turned into a craft project this week.
“Cut & Dried” will be one of the largest books we’ve published (at about 400 pages) and covers every aspect of our beloved material, from how it grows, all the way to how it behaves when it’s in a finished piece of furniture. In between, Jones covers every aspect of the material, from fungi and pests to sawmills and kilns.
And, most importantly, the book is told from the perspective of a woodworker. Jones is a lifelong professional woodworker and instructor. While there are many other fine books on wood technology out there, Jones thought they were aimed more at a scientific audience than at furniture makers. And we agreed.
So Jones spent many years researching, writing, photographing and drawing this book to develop what we think is the most complete and understandable guide to wood.
We’ll be talking more about Jones’s exhaustive treatment of the topic in the coming days. But first, a look at how we developed the cover. It also involved woodworking.
“Cut & Dried” delves deep into the structure of trees and how that affects your work at the bench. And so I wanted a cover that displayed the structure without being too technical about it – this book is not written for wood scientists.
During my experiments with shou sugi ban, I became fascinated with how a torch can burn away the earlywood in some softwoods, leaving the hard latewood and exposing the pores that transmit fluid in the tree. I wondered if this could result in a woodblock-like print for the cover. After searching around, I became inspired by the work of Shona Branigan who does this sort of thing but takes it to a sublime artistic level.
This week, Megan Fitzpatrick, Brendan Gaffney and I spent a day messing around with different trees to make a block for the cover. In the end, Megan snitched an offcut of a neighbor’s Christmas tree – a Scot’s pine – that we cut, burned, brushed and inked. It took us about 25 tries to get the look we wanted.
If all goes to plan we’ll be offering this book for pre-publication ordering next week. When it’s released, we’ll have details on pricing and the ship date.
Although Saint Joseph was a carpenter it can be a challenge to find him working as such in many paintings of the Holy Family. Prior to his rejuvenation during the Counter-Reformation he was often an ancillary figure, off to the side, as Jesus and Mary were venerated. In paintings of the Nativity is wasn’t uncommon to see Saint Joseph mingling with the livestock or peering over a wattle wall at the newborn Jesus. Sometimes Joseph was making soup.
Finding good workworking scenes was a matter of studying the details of the many paintings and manuscripts that were vetted for inclusion in “Ingenious Mechanicks.” First, I had to find Saint Joseph, then figure out what he was doing.
The painting above is a good example of how it can be difficult to find Saint Joseph. Take away the many decorative elements and look only at the painting. Two of the three Magi are in the foreground and in the center middle ground the third has just dismounted his horse. Where is Joseph?
Adoration of the Kings, 1515, by Barthel Bartholomaeus Bruyn.
Oh, there he is, sqeezed off to the right side, holding a plane while standing at his bench. Without the bench and plane (and no halo) we wouldn’t know it was Saint Joseph.
The next three paintings were put into a timeline that I used to write my chapter (that would be Chapter 4). The time line was used to determine possible patterns of when and where low workbenches were found.
The Merode Altarpiece, 1427-1432, workshop of Robert Campin. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Merode Altarpiece is legend among woodworkers. And it is fortunate that the three panels are still together for the viewer to see the entire story. The center panel depicting the Annunciation is the main event, however, Saint Joseph is not usually seen when the angel appears to Mary. Which makes me think if the panel with Saint Joseph was separated from the triptych would we know it was Saint Joseph? Anyway, I’m assuming Joseph lives in a different part of the house and has squeezed into his own mini-workshop. With incredible detail we can see his bench, tools, the two mousetraps already made and a work in progress.
Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1480 by the Master of the Legend of Saint Barbara (active in Brussels 1470-1500). Collection of the Palazzo Colonna, Rome.
This is a good example of how I might first encounter a painting online: someone took a photo of the painting hanging on a museum wall. It turns out this is a center panel of a triptych that has apparently been separated. After lightening this a bit the darkness to the left reveals Saint Joseph.
Detail from an article by Anne L. Williams in The Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art, Vol. 10.1.
There he is. Not too far from the livestock, sitting on his staked bench, a finished mousetrap on his workbench as he starts work on another project.
Saint Luc Peignant la Vierge, est.1465-1493, by Colijin de Coter. Eglise Notre-Dame, Vieure, France.
Saint Luke is the patron saint of artists and is usually depicted writing portions of the Bible or painting a portrait of Mary and the Baby Jesus. This is a painting I put aside to study later for my own amusement, not expecting to find Saint Joseph. When I did take a closer look at the background it seemed there was a possible Saint Joseph, but the resolution was too low to make out the details. I went to the RKD database and found a photo of the painting.
Saint Joseph looking none too happy has been relegated to the garden while Mary sits for her portrait. A few tools on the ground, a plane and chisel on the workbench and he is working on ghe same project as the other two Josephs (or the same Joseph, but at different times?).
To satisfy my curiosity I had to find out what the three Josephs were making. I found the answer on a French woodworking forum: a chaufferette. If it was cold weather and you didn’t have a sixteen-pound heater cat to curl itself around your feet you needed a chaufferette, otherwise known as a foot warmer.
Chaufferettes: Right: detail from The Milkmaid by Vermeer. Left: detail from Joost Cornelis Droochsloot’s self-portrait.
A wooden chaufferette was a ventilated box lined with metal into which hot coals were put. It might have a hinged top or open side. Chaufferettes could also be made of other materials.
After Saint Joseph’s make over in the Counter-Reformation he became a more important, and often central figure, in paintings. Although he might not be engaged in woodworking in every painting he is always easy to find.
Next time I’ll tell you about two ‘Ah-ha!’ moments that we had during research for “Ingenious Mechanicks.” I believe one instance caused Christopher Schwarz to wet his pants.
