Melancholia

In my never-ending quest to organize and reorganize the barn, I often find myself in a Christmas moment; “Wow, I forgot that I had this!” or more likely, “Oh, so that’s where I put this.”  Four floors of tools, books, and supplies to sort will do that to you.

I recently had an instance that was and was not one of these times.  I found myself relocating a chair frame I commissioned Philippe Lafargue to make for me probably more than three decades ago.  It served for so many years as my reading and writing chair at S.I. and for some time at the barn.

Being a classically trained chairmaker at Ecole Boulle this project was like falling off a log for Philippe since virtually all of his fabrication work was curvy fancy French chairs.  This severe boxy form was no challenge for him.

He was there long before the beginning of the Roubo Project, he translated the Table of Contents for me around 1987 when he was a post-graduate Fellow with me in the Furniture Conservation Studio.  That ToC burned brightly for me, and when Michele Pagan and I started the project for real more than a decade later we knew that Philippe had to be part of it.  Philippe was a classically trained 18th Century Ecole Boulle craftsman, where he completed the full four-year curriculum, simultaneously conversant in 18th craft technique and lexicon, a native Francophone and fully conversant in vernacular and academic English.

For the years of the project until his untimely death a few months ago (somewhat unnerving to us since his fatal illness was the same one that took Mel Wachowiak from me a decade earlier) his contribution was a vital connection to reality.

I am now diligently searching for someone to take up his portfolio.  If you know anyone who fits the job description above, let me know.  Really, let me know.

This was the last time Philippe and I were together in person, at the premier of the Deluxe version of Roubo on Marquetry during the 2013 Woodworking in America shindig.  He eventually wound up back in France, fleeing his domestic life here in the States.