“Different Sorts of Wood and Their Positioning According to Hue,” Plate 277 in L’art du Menuisier, is one of the most astounding pages in the entire set. It confirms Roubo was both a genius and aesthete, representing various wood samples in vivid detail and readable even though they are in grayscale.
This page is one of the treasures from my inventory, and it is priced accordingly. It is in excellent condition, and was drawn and engraved by Roubo himself.
If you have ever wanted to own a genuine piece of Rouboiana, this is your chance. I will be selling this print at Handworks on a first-come basis, with terms being cash, check, or Paypal if you have a smart phone and can do that at the time of the transaction.
The item listed tonight is Print #275, “Small Commodes, Corner Cabinets, and Chiffoniers.”
The page has the charming misalignment of other pages from L’art du Menuisier when the paper and the engraved plate were not perfectly aligned, resulting in an image that is slightly askew. the print is in very good condition within the image boundaries, but there is some staining on the perimeter of the page and one corner has a slight loss, and the price reflects these.
The composition and engraving of the copper plate were done by Roubo himself.
If you have ever wanted to own a genuine piece of Rouboiana, this is your chance. I will be selling this print at Handworks on a first-come basis, with terms being cash, check, or Paypal if you have a smart phone and can do that at the time of the transaction.
Finally, we get to a picture of some furniture! In this page from L’art du Menuisier, #274, “Plans and Elevations of a Common Commode,” Roubo continues a tutorial that runs throughout the entire opus — the exposition on and exhortation towards the creation of stylistic beauty. Here he provides several options for interpreting what we would call a dresser, but they named commode.
The print is in excellent condition, with the expected oxidation of 250 years at the perimeter of the page. As with some others in my inventory it has the charming feature unique to hand-printing pages, namely that the plate and the page were not perfectly aligned and are thus slightly askew.
The composition and engraving of the copper plate were done by Roubo himself.
If you have ever wanted to own a genuine piece of Rouboiana, this is your chance. I will be selling this print at Handworks on a first-come basis, with terms being cash, check, or Paypal if you have a smart phone and can do that at the time of the transaction.
Josh Farnsworth has posted the third episode from his visit to The Barn a couple months ago. I hope you find it amusing.
Given this entree into reality television perhaps I too am qualified to someday become President. Then again perhaps not, inasmuch as I already know some about history, political theory, economics, the Constitution, etc. If recent decades have shown us anything it is that those things do not resonate with the electorate. So on second thought, I’ll just stay in the mountains.
I was finally able to carve out another few hours to get the two workbenches ready to go for use as tables at Handworks.
My first task was to get the last two legs fitted and trimmed, then I had both benches up on their feet. I trimmed the ends with my 10″ Milwaukee circular saw and spent about an hour total rough flattening the tops with a fore plane.
With that done I drilled a number of holes for holdfasts and fitted the planing stop on the one bench I will be keeping. I have to consult again with the LoC folks before doing any more to theirs.
And, it was a functional workbench. After Handworks I will do the final truing of the top, add a crochet and shelf to mine and stick it in the shop.
With that I stuck a pair of horses underneath one bench, and using a block saved just for that purpose, drove out the legs. Then I lifted the end of the second bench up on to the first bench top sitting on the horses and drove out the first pair of its legs. I slid the bench top onto the first one up to the second pair of legs and drove them out too.
The whole pile now sits close to the door, ready to head off to Iowa. And the time card read 24 hours.
In another of the detailed construction drawing sprinkled throughout L’art du Menuisier Roubo presents Print 273, “Developments [Details] of the Buffet Represented in the Previous Plate.” Here he shows the precise schematics and cross sections of the assembly and especially the interrelation of the joinery and the moldings used to create a beautiful armoir or buffet.
Like a great many of these pages Roubo both drew the illustration and engraved the printing plate himself.
Due to some staining just inside the left border of the print this one is probably in fair condition, as is reflected in the price.
If you have ever wanted to own a genuine piece of Rouboiana, this is your chance. I will be selling this print at Handworks on a first-come basis, with terms being cash, check, or Paypal if you have a smart phone and can do that at the time of the transaction.
One of the things about the Allegheny Highlands of Virginia is the abundance of rocks. Everywhere. Even when preparing the soil for gardening a roto-tiller is pretty much useless as watermelon-sized (and larger) boulders lurk just under the surface.
On the other hand there is plenty of raw material for masonry and dry-stack stone walls. Fortunately for us locals there is an artist in stacked stone, DanielH, who, perhaps not coincidentally, has the physique of a power lifter. We have long noticed a gradual collapse of a retaining wall around the old spring near the cabin, and after being on Daniel’s waiting list the day finally arrived for him and his helper to come and rebuild it.
I’m not sure how well this shows up in photos, but a few short hours of their skilled ministrations and the wall looked a-new. Not being one to backseat-drive I left them to their work while I was up in the barn. By the time I came down the hill for lunch they had un-stacked and re-stacked the wall properly. I do not know how long the previous iteration has been there, but I am pretty sure the new configuration will last for generations.
Not content to leave it at this tiny project we decided to commission him to build a retaining wall leading into the root cellar. They hand-dug the excavation for that and will build up the inventory of rocks needed to chisel and fit them into a finished wall in the coming days.
There is something truly impressive about watching a mesomorph balletic-ally maneuver a nearly half-ton rock delicately into place.
Throughout L’art du Menuisier Roubo vacillated between grand images of stylistic interpretations to instruct his contemporaries about the nature of beauty and the enterprise of dong so at a nuts-and-bots level. Today’s offering from my collection, #271, “Various Sorts of Shelves and the Profiles Appropriate for Armoirs,” is definitely in the latter group, as he details the profiles of moldings and further construction details for, not surprisingly given the title of the plate, large clothes storage units. I was particularly taken with the lattice-weave shelves, optimal for ventilation in the cabinet to prevent staleness.
The page is in very good-to-excellent condition.
The image was drawn by Roubo and he engraved the plate himself.
If you have ever wanted to own a genuine piece of Rouboiana, this is your chance. I will be selling this print at Handworks on a first-come basis, with terms being cash, check, or Paypal if you have a smart phone and can do that at the time of the transaction.
May 23-27 Making a Ripple Molding Cutter – this is less of a workshop than a week long gathering of fellow galoots trying to design and build a machine to allow us to recreate ripple and wave moldings. Material and supplies costs divvied up, no tuition.
This event is pretty much full, but I could squeeze in somebody who just has to be there.
June 16-18 Make a Nested Set of Brass Roubo Squares – This is a weekend of metal working, as we fabricate a full set of nested brass squares with ogee tips, as illustrated in Plate 308 of l’art du Menuisier. The emphasis will be entirely on metal fabrication and finishing, including silver soldering with jeweler Lydia Fast, and creating a soldering station for the workbench. Tuition $375, materials cost $50.
I still have one space left.
July 24-28 Minimalist Woodworking with Vic Tesolin –
This class has been cancelled. Vic and I are hoping to reschedule it for next summer.
August 11-13 Historic Finishing – My own long-time favorite, we will spend three days reflecting on, and enacting, my “Six Rules For Perfect Finishing” in the historic tradition of spirit and wax coatings. Each participant should bring a small finishing project with them, and will accompany that project with creating numerous sample boards to keep in your personal collections. Tuition $375.
This class has one opening remaining.
September 4-8 Build An Heirloom Workbench – I’m repeating the popular and successful week-long event from last year, wherein the participants will fashion a Roubo-style workbench from laminated southern yellow pine. Every participant will leave at the end with a completed bench, ready to be put to work as soon as you get home and find three friends to help you move it into the shop. Tuition and Materials $825 total.
One of the most interesting things to me about these prints from L’art du Menuisier is Roubo’s depiction of how things are put together, such as the working mechanism of a tamboured roll top desk. Print #263, “Further Developments of Roll-Top Desks and Other Writing Tables” illustrates the assembly of a coil-spring-driven roll-top desk and the manner in which the tambours are retracted and released. I just think this is cool.
As with some of the other prints from my selection this one is a tiny bit askew as the copper plate and the page margins were not perfectly aligned, an artifact of hand-printing I find charming. The page is in very good-to-excellent condition.
The image was drawn by Roubo and he engraved the plate himself.
If you have ever wanted to own a genuine piece of Rouboiana, this is your chance. I will be selling this print at Handworks on a first-come basis, with terms being cash, check, or Paypal if you have a smart phone and can do that at the time of the transaction.
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