Why a woodworker Part 3 Final

Why a woodworker Part 3  Final

“I derive a certain pleasure from an awareness of our gift of wood. Beside giving me it’s chemical and utilitarian benefits, like the fireplace that ‘warms the soul as well as the body,’ the tree and its wood are a most necessary part of my life’s aesthetic enjoyment.” (Eric Sloane, A Reverence For Wood, Author’s Note)

The aesthetic feeling for wood furniture was passed from Curly Ballou to his daughter, my mother, Frances Anne. When my parents were married in 1946,  my father commissioned a set of classic Hitchcock chairs.

They were custom stenciled by F.W. Hunter in New Milford, Connecticut. They currently grace our homemade dining table. It’s odd that these traditional chairs work with a modern design (in my view). The stenciling has faded and almost goes unnoticed, but the painted curves of the leg posts and back splats compliment the curved legs of the table and the edges of the top. They are too delicate for today’s sitters, though. I hope someday to study with Peter Galbert and make my own chairs.

To complete my three part post on “Why a woodworker” I’ll present photos of and comment on six more pieces of furniture that I grew up with which have come down to our family.

The first is this dough box. Growing up, I knew this as a stand for our family television. My mother did educate me as to it’s original purpose (while I munched on Twinkies, most likely). What eventually dawned on me were the joints, dovetails, the geometric shape, a hopper, and the wide, knot-free pine boards. It was clearly made in a remote time when people used their hands to make necessary items for their daily sustenance and their available material was lumber from huge trees.

Not everything made in earlier times had to be of strict utilitarian design. These maple bed posts from the bed in my parents’ room had really interesting turnings and there were slight variations from one to the other. I must have run my hands over these shapes thousands of times.

My mom referred to this next one as a “pail bench.” Coming in from the barn the farmer would put his recently filled milking pail on it. My grandmother used it as a coffee table in front of her couch, which she called a “divan.” I like the simple semi-circular cut-outs and the splayed ends. Even simple day- to- day objects had some flair.

There was more flair on the contoured shape of this mirror.

The plinth of this chest of drawers works very effectively to offset the straight rectangle of this chest of drawers.

Lastly, there is a “tavern table,” as my mother called it. It has a very wide, single board top, tapered legs with edge beading and a single, centered flute, and a whittled drawer pull. In its time I imagine that friends pulled up to this board and shared food, stories, and discussed the events of the day. Today an appliance rests on top of it which allows me to share stories (no food, but recipes) with people around the globe. While sitting by it I so often examine the hand shaped edges, run my finger tips over the protruding square nail heads, notice the seasonal wood movement as the thirty inch wide top shrinks or expands relative to the breadboard ends( which it has done for … a couple hundred years?) and feel an incredible gratitude to be involved in the age old tradition of woodworking.