Why a woodworker. Part 2.
My maternal grandfather, Clarence. M. Ballou, was born in North Adams, Massachusetts. The Ballous were one of the earliest New England families. He graduated from Cornell in 1907 with a specialty in Mechanical Engineering. His working career in the steel and railroad industries began in Braddock, Pennsylvania, where he married my grandmother and started a family. In the1930s he became Vice President and General Manager of the Cleveland Railway Corporation, later President of the Steel Warehouse Association in Cleveland, and at the time of his death Vice President of the American Creosoting Company.
I’m lucky to be in possession of his college scrapbook when he was a Cornell student. It is filled with theater reviews and playbills of both college dramatic productions as well as items from the New York stage. He loved the theater and acquired the nickname “Curly Ballou”which was a take off on a leading actor of the day, Kerle Bellew.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I never knew him, so all the anecdotal personal information about him I picked up from my grandmother and mother. In addition to his love of theater was a love of furniture. You’ll see in the following pictures very fine portraits of room settings in my grandparents’ home in Cleveland. According to my grandmother, he personally restored quite a number of old pieces, many of which he found being discarded on the curb, covered in paint.
(Click on any image to enlarge)
I have often considered what it was like to grow up in that time period in America. The exponential growth of post Civil War industrialization changed cities as well as rural landscapes to such an extent that, while there must have been great excitement about progress, there must also have been a sense of what was being lost, overlooked, and no longer considered to be of value. I imagine that Curly had a keen sensibility for the vanishing world of artisan made goods, contrasting so starkly with his professional world in the giant industries of steel and transportation. It would have been a tonic to spend time in a workshop bringing back to simple dignity these useful hand made objects.
He also took delight in making things, as can be seen in this Christmas present.
I’ll end this post with a photo of a cherry table that has come to me from my grandparents’ home. I can’t say for sure if he bought it pretty much as is or if he restored it. What I hope the picture shows are the hand plane marks on the top. It wasn’t sanded perfectly smooth and flat. It has a texture, an individual character that catches my interest. It ties in directly to one of my woodworking heroes, the recently departed James Krenov, who encouraged craftsmen to leave their “fingerprints”.
Thanks, Curly, for saving the fingerprints.
Clarence Maturin Ballou 1886-1948
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