Joshua Klein during a visit to Jonathan Fisher’s Maine home.
Joshua Klein, a woodworker and conservator in Maine, is now accepting pre-publication orders for the first issue of Mortise & Tenon Magazine, which looks to be very interesting reading.
You might have heard of Klein through his blog, The Workbench Diary, or some of the stories I’ve written about his research of Jonathan Fisher (Klein is writing a book about Fisher for us, by the way).
In addition to his conservation work, a young family, taking apart a house for later reconstruction and writing a book for us, Klein has poured an enormous amount of energy into Mortise & Tenon Magazine to make sure it is a high-quality, well-made publication.
Take a look at the table of contents for the first issue here.
Then click on the “Pre-order Now” button. The first issue is just $24 – a bargain for such a labor of love. I ordered mine as soon as I got up this morning.
Whether you like old furniture, handwork or conservation, you’ll find a lot in the first issue to love.
It has been about three months since I became a blog minion so it must be time to lob a mudball towards Chris. Afterall, in my first post I revealed Chris’ “special” relationship with a certain jack plane. You can read about Schwarzlandiahere.
The Harry Potter-Chris Schwarz connection came to me while working on the post Fear and Anarchy in Fort Mitchell (and thanks to all of you who joined in and twisted some literature with me). The opening sentence to the first Harry Potter book just didn’t work for that post. Next, I tried the second chapter and things got a bit more interesting and uncanny.
“Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their anarchist on the front step…” And a few more pages into Chapter 2 we find this passage, “…Chris had a thin face, knobby knees, black hair and bright brown eyes. He wore roundish glasses held together with a lot of hide glue because of all the times Wally the cat had punched him on the nose. The only thing Chris liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead that was shaped like a swooping A.”
When I showed the Harry Potter photo comparison to Chris his response was not about his resembleance to Harry but about his smile. His exact comment was, “Oy, I look so manic in that photo. I hate smiling with teeth.” My response to that nonsense:
A little tilt to his head and Chris and the Cheshire Cat are simpatico.
Chris, there is nothing wrong with smiling with teeth. There is no mania, or at least not very much. Smile, Chris, smile.
Now, I must get back to reading (and preparing to index) the portion of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” that Chris sent me a few days ago. Except for some artwork the first two-thirds of the book are done. As for the first two chapters, Chris is….feisty.
–Suzo Ellison
P.S. Thank you to whoevertook the smiley photo of Chris.
Recently I saw a painting that really should not have featured any furniture at all. My reaction was, “Well that was unexpected.” Have I become more attuned to the presence of furniture (the non-upholstered kind) after reading and indexing several books for Lost Art Press. Have I been spending more time finding images of furniture and woodworking than watching cat videos? Yes, I think that must be it.
So, I did a review of some of my saved images, a few books and films and started noticing…Windsor chairs. I guess in the past the birthday cake and the cats in 1950s-era dresses distracted me.
Windsor chairs by Gorey (l.), Windsors & sideboard by Mainzer (r.)
One of my favorite books is “Under the Cherry Blossom Tree – An Old Japanese Tale” retold and illustrated by Allen Say. Maybe I should have noticed this before with all the time I spent on “Campaign Furniture.”
Is he sitting on…? Yes it is! A Roubo folding campaign stool!
In my 1968 copy of “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame and illustrated by David Stone I stumbed on this cozy scene. Previously, I focused on all the cute little mice crowded together and warming themselves by the fire. Now, all I can see is the (Furniture of Necessity) settle.
In Hitchcock’s 1954 film “Rear Window” James Stewart lives in a really neat studio apartment. The focus is on him, what Grace Kelly will wear in the next scene and what are the neighbors up to. Did you know he had a tansu in his apartment? In 1954?
Tansu to the far right under the hanging light.
I have a tansu so maybe I’m a little tansu-sensitive. But did you notice the two in last year’s animated “Big Hero 6”? A fairly large tansu with sliding doors and multiple drawers was in the workshop where Hiro is putting armor on Baymax.
Large tansu far right.
The better tansu is in Hiro’s bedroom. The bedroom is stuffed with detail and it was hard to get a good long look at the tansu. By watching one clip about 30 times I did get the configuration figured out. The top two-thirds: five square equal-size drawers run lenghwise on the right; on the left side there are four drawers with the top three of equal size, the lowest one is about half again as deep. The next section has sliding doors; the bottom section is one full-width drawer.
Tansu detail.Bottom of tansu, sliding door and drawer below.
You might be wondering which painting started this whole thing. It was an 18th-century Korean painting with tansu. Since this is a somewhat family-friendly blog only the edited version can be shown:
An unexpected tansu on right, giggling girl on left.
I was searching for examples of traditional Korean furniture and this painting was in the search results. It is from “An Album of Erotic Paintings.” There’s no need for furniture in this type of painting! By the way, the giggling girl is pointing at something hilarious.
I’m going to make my searches much, much more specific in future.
I don’t sleep as well when I have French workbench in pieces in my shop. Even a little wood movement in the joints can make assembly a bear, or at least a ticked-off warthog.
Yesterday I fit the legs in their mortises. Today I got everything major assembled. Some specs for the curious:
The base is drawbored with 5/8” hickory dowel stock. The drawbore offset was a strong 1/8”, and I drove the pins in with a sledge.
All the joints are strengthened by Titebond Liquid Hide Glue.
This bench is 9’ long – the most common size called out in “l’Art du menuisier.” It’s more than a 1’ longer than my bench but seems a lot longer.
Height is about 31”, as per the customer’s request. A nice height – almost as nice as 38”.
Benchtop depth is 21”, one of my favorite depths.
Next comes the fun part. This customer asked for the full-on Plate 11 treatment. So it’s getting two Peter Ross holdfasts, the fully joined tongue-and-groove shelf, Peter Ross planing stop and iron bits for the vise, a dovetailed drawer, swing-out grease pot and tool rack at the back.
This will be the closest full-on Plate 11 bench I’ve yet built. The next closest thing involves a time travel machine, which Stumpy Nubs is currently fabricating on an X-carve in Baltic birch.
Each time “The Book of Plates” is mentioned I pull out my copy, flip through the pages and find something new to study. Last year I had a lot of fun creating artwork using details from BoP. There was a “rabbiting” plane, a thieving crow and a dinner plate to name a few Roubo-inspired creations.
Roubo very kindly included several plates on staircase design and construction. He gave us straights, spirals and curves with each detail connecting to the next, helping us visualize the whole.
Like many travelers I want to climb and photograph staircases. Some are marvels of construction and seem to defy gravity. Others are my nemesis with risers too low or high, too dark, no handrail. Whether floating or falling down, a grand staircase is great for a dramatic entrance. A spiral staircase in a small apartment is like having your own floor-to-ceiling sculpture.
We need well-designed staircases (and their cousins, the ladders) to move us up and down in our worlds. A solid set of steps is satisfying whereas an unsteady stairway can be terrifying. The light at the top of the stairs is reassuring; the darkness at the bottom is to be avoided. Designed by Roubo, or others, we all tumble down stairs from time to time with alcohol, cats, verigo, or more cats the usual culprits. My father once observed that my mother and I seemed to be more prone to falling up stairs to which we replied, “It was a trip, just a trip! There was no falling!”
Roubo’s staircases are in Plates 162 through 170. Plate 164 is a particular favorite of mine. By following the connecting lines the builder can see and understand, from top to bottom, the construction of these stairs. As with all of Roubo’s plates considerable thought and artistic ability went into its planning and execution. We need stairs and Roubo gave us some beauties.
I’ve always thought the painting “Staircase, Doylestown” and a couple of lines from a Thackeray poem made a perfect pair. Now, I think Roubo’s “Staircase, Plate 164” partners equally well with these lines from “The Cane Bottom’d Chair”:
“Away from the world and its toils and cares,
I’ve a snug little kingdom up four pair of stairs”.
“Staircase, Doylestown” (1925) by Charles Sheeler, Jr.
