Part of me knows what it feels like to be a doctor at a dinner party. In my case, instead of being asked about aches and pains I am dragged off to an obscure corner of a house to admire and provide some consultation for a family treasure. More times than not “the treasure” is a fake or otherwise unimportant except for sentimental importance to the owner(s).
But every so often there is that truly special encounter.
Recently while in Mordor to visit the grandsons (oh, and their parents) my daughter mentioned that their next-door-neighbor had an antique she would like to show me. Being the victim of good upbringing I readily agreed.
And what I encountered was an historical treasure, symbolically embodying the emergence of the Modern Age.
The item in question was an intact very early telephone in pristine condition, complete with the original magneto, wiring and schematic note card that would have come with the unit originally!
It was a genuine delight to examine and comment on this artifact, given its near perfect completeness and condition. This belongs in the lineage of a family that knows and respects history and the artifacts that embody it. I gave them a copy of SAVING STUFF to enhance their own diligent efforts in continuing to preserve family heritage.
Thanks Ms. J for letting me indulge my own passions for the fabric of the Past.
The folks at Lost Art Press have confirmed the Roubo On Marquetry,the volume that got it all started, is now at the printer for a second production run. The expected availability is around Christmas, after having been sold out for the past year. Just in time, if you get my drift.
The book is the result of the answer to a simple question I asked of Michele Pagan: “Could you translate a little of this?” It contains the wisdom related to my great interests, marquetry and finishing.
The “stack” we will be sawing into elegant patterns: plywood or mat-board outer sheets, pewter and brass sheet, waxed paper, and “tordonshell.”
I am very pleased to confirm that Joshua Farnsworth over at Wood and Shop has scheduled my Boullework Marquetry class for this upcoming year. I’ve been working on persuading him for some time, this one is pretty far outside the comfort zone for the school, so I urge you to support us in this listing.
We’ll be making some of my own invention, “tordonshell.” I’ll have pre-made shell for everyone to use in the class; this is for the students to take home.
I look forward to seeing you in Earlysville VA, September 20-22, 2027.
For the past few weeks we’ve been afflicted by the nuisance of being bombarded by thousands of two-inch ball bearings cascading down into the yard. You might call these ball bearings “black walnuts” but we just view them as hazards of the yard and hillside to be navigated around.
Neither of us like eating black walnuts so we see nothing beneficial in their presence. In addition, many of Mrs. Barn’s plants, especially in the vegetable garden, are harmed by the toxic juglone in walnuts, walnut leaves, and walnut sap. She’s had to reconfigure the garden continuously to accommodate the magnificent trees growing just outside the west end of the fenced area.
Bombing season is drawing to a close so I will rake up the trash-can-full of these dangerous nuisances in the coming days. If only we had a better breed of squirrels to haul them all away. We’ve got gigantic squirrels here (seriously, almost as big as the cat) but the bums are too lazy to bother with our needs and clean up the yard.
With days getting shorter and nights getting cooler, the forecast for a few days of below-freezing nights had us diligently wrapping up the squash harvest. This is about 2/3 of the haul, I just forgot to take the last “all done” picture. Winter is a time of heavy soup and stew lunches, and one of my absolute favorites is her squash soup made with fresh raw milk and heavy cream. No need for dessert with that on the table.
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Combined with Mrs. Barn’s relentless earlier harvesting and canning, we are just about wrapped up for the season. There are a few more tomatoes in the greenhouse but we do not know their ultimate disposition.
When you live in heavily wooded hills like Shangri-la, the term “sunrise” can have different meanings. In the case of today’s post, it is the time when actual sunshine strikes the surroundings, or somewhere between 9AM and noon.
This tree exploded in chromatic brilliance once the sun was on it. Last week’s pic was from a grim, grey day that was followed that night with four inches of rain.
My oldest picture (very distant and blurry) of this tree was from 25 years ago and it was a sapling probably the size of my wrist. Now the trunk is the size of my waist.
Every Spring, Winterthur Museum hosts a Furniture Symposium, and I have been invited (again). I will present a demonstration on the making of Gragg’s Elastic Chairs during this year’s event, April 23&24, 2027. (I say “again” because I was invited to present five years ago but was then disinvited when I declined to comply with their Fauci Flu protocols.)
I think my presentation/demonstration will be about 75-90(?) minutes, which should be quite the adventure. You can follow the event developments at winterthur.org. Just go to the “Calendar” page.
I hope to see you there.
Once I get my teaching and presentation schedule finalized for 2027 I will post it here.
This video had been sitting in my “to watch” queue for a while, and once I watched it I was delighted I did. (this channel has more than a little whiff of hypercomputationality about it, a/k/a artificial “intelligence,” but the content is pretty darn interesting)
It brought to mind a couple unrelated items.
The first was the reminder this excerpt from the apostle Paul’s letter to the Philippians:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Then came the memory of me teaching bench skills to an intern. I demonstrated making a dovetail and left her to execute the same exercise from start to finish. After almost an hour-and-a-half, she came into my space and was clearly exasperated. She had cut several dovetail sets, none of them worth anything other than kindling. She asked me to show her the complete process again, and that was when she got really angry.
“I’ve been working on these forever and you just come in and do it in fifteen minutes,” she fumed.
“Not exactly,” I replied. “I did it in thirty years and fifteen minutes.”
After watching this video, I understand why I prefer to start out my day sweeping the floor. It’s what gets me going.
Just don’t ask me to work sitting cross-legged on the floor.
One component of my activities organizing and streamlining barn/shop space and function this year has been taking a page from the American political handbook, wherein electoral district has been reconfigured to render a permanent advantage. This process is known as Gerrymandering in honor of it first practitioner, early 19th Century Boston politician Eldrige Gerry. Ostensibly this practice has been attributed to partisan advantage, but in practice it has mostly been used to protect incumbents. (Actually, only one Party has this strategy figured out and the other is just spinning on its thumb.)
In my case the spatial reorganization has been centered on the question, “How often did I use this particular tool or supply?” If the answer was, “Not in several years,” the item(s) got moved from a place of relatively easy access into deep(er) storage.
Given the termination of workshop activities here, thus no longer needing classroom or dormitory space, I have plenty of available space to use for storage and archiving. Lots of stuff has been relocated to reflect more current usage.
One instance of that was removing the leather, mother-of-pearl, and veneer inventories in the giant map case in my main shop workspace. I had already reconfigured the top of the cabinet quite a while ago to serve as the location for processing beeswax and shellac wax, and the occasional batch of Mel’s Wax. The leather inventory consumed four drawers, the MOP four drawers, and the special veneers three drawers.
The mother -of-pearl went into two large storage bins now located on the shelves now ringing the former classroom. The specialty veneers went underneath a rolling worktable that is moved to wherever it is needed (I have a giant stash of walnut and cherry veneers up in the former dorm space), and the leather went into two giant storage bins and a large plastic trash can now relocated on top of that veneer stash.
Seriously, what in the work was I doing with a complete buffalo hide and a zebra skin rug? And a big pile of elephant hide?
Who knows.
The map case was about 90% empty, available for a large inventory of different tools that had previously occupied a nearby cabinet.
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