Photo by Gordon Baer. Courtesy of Kentucky Folk Art Center Archives. Chester Cornett was an anachronism in post-World War II Appalachia. While so much of the region had begun its slow introduction to the trends of modern American culture, Cornett lived a close-to-the-ground lifestyle, complete with bare feet, overalls, and a wild mane of hair. When Gurney Norman wrote a lengthy piece in the Hazard Herald in 1965 about this largely unknown Appalachian chairmaker titled “Rare Hand-Made Furniture Produced by Bearded Chairmaker,” he set off a chain of events that would shape the next two decades of that chairmaker’s life. Cornett (1913-1981), was a native of the remote Appalachian hollows and hills who spent the better part of his life making all...
We need your help. The late woodworking legend Phil Lowe is about to honored in one of the most democratic and noble ways possible: all 350 of his full-size furniture drawings are going to be digitized and distributed for free. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Phil Lowe has probably studied and reproduced more historic American furniture than 99% of woodworkers alive today. This is the reason we interviewed him in Issue One, and the reason everyone defers to his expertise. Lowe’s student, Nick Maraldo, and longtime shop assistant, Artie Keenan, are taking it upon themselves to organize and coordinate large-format archival scanning of the drawings so that they can be archived in an online database for woodworkers...
After months and months of planning and content creating, Mike and I held our breath as the first day of the Mortise & Tenon Apprenticeship Program opened this morning. The email went out notifying apprentices of the Week One Launch, and we let out a sigh of relief when they started in on the videos. Several apprentices began wading into the reading material weeks ago. Photo courtesy: Guy E. This is a great group of folks. We have people from all over the US as well as Canada, UK, Norway, and a few in Australia. Over the past month, they’ve all been sharing stories of how they got into hand-tool woodworking (including one guy’s dramatic story about a tornado nearly...
“Wood is a wild material not easily tamed,” I wrote in “A Tale of Two Trees,” featured in Issue Six of M&T. The point is that even as we use the latest technology to prep and process the living daylights out of a piece of lumber before it gets stacked at the home center, we can’t fully remove its rowdier inclinations. Wood is hygroscopic, so it absorbs and releases moisture based on environmental conditions. The nature of grain structure causes wood to expand in warmer, more humid seasons, but it often does so unpredictably. Trees rarely add growth rings with perfect uniformity; instead, they are built in response to stresses the tree perceives through the growth cycle. Prevailing winds cause a...
We’ve had #30 roofing felt (tar paper) covering the roof of the smithy for two years now. It’s held up remarkably well (though we did recently replace the ridge piece). It’s amazing how time flies as other responsibilities pull you away from projects. But that felt only lasts so long, so after sending Issue Eleven to the printer this morning, I joined Mike C and Mike U on the staging and started nailing up courses of super-thick (3/4") cedar shingles we purchased from a local shingle mill, who sourced the trees only a few minutes up the road from us. The afternoon was hot… real hot. In the blasting sun, we only got the first few courses on before quitting...
Courtesy: The Foxfire Museum. Mike and I spent today editing and copy reading Issue Eleven in anticipation of sending the files off to the printer later this week. As we work through this material with our fine-toothed combs, we are again struck by the inherent humanness that emanates from these stories. This issue is all about people most fundamentally. It can happen that in the course of researching artisans of the past, we turn our subjects of study into objects of study. We think “they” all worked in the same way and for the same reasons, and if we could just figure it out, we’d unlock the mystery. But people don’t work that way. We aren’t that simple, and neither...
George Sturt’s The Wheelwright’s Shop is one of the most important (and most beautiful) books written in the time of transition from a pre-industrial economy to one of modern mechanization and methods in the late 19th century. Sturt was a wheelwright who owned a shop in Farnham, U.K., and was also a vivid and thoughtful writer. He describes his trade and village in detail, from interactions with neighbors and workmen to the proper felling of trees and use of tools. Throughout the book, Sturt maintains an ideological connection to the simple ways of the past even as he sees the writing on the wall for the new advent of machine manufacture, leaving the local craftsman behind. We’re pleased to announce...
Mortise & Tenon Magazine · 32 – Things We Argue About
In this episode, Joshua and Mike respond to a thoughtful listener’s comments, which inspired a podcast as well as scored a free T-shirt. They discuss elements of craft where they might not see eye-to-eye, but commend the value of being a stubborn woodworker. Looking at what makes a “movement” and why these reactionary efforts often come to nothing, they talk about what might be a better way forward.
SHOW NOTES:
Mortise & Tenon Issue Eleven
Pehr Hilleström – "A Carpenter" painting
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Biosphere 2
The Good Life by Scott & Helen Nearing
Tools For Conviviality by Ivan Illich
Roman workbenches belong to a class of furniture that historian Victor Chinnery called “staked” or “with stake feet.” Essentially it is a platform of thick wood with legs driven into the plank, like tent stakes. The staked feet make construction a cinch (bore holes, drive in the legs and wedge them). But what is more interesting to a workbench nerd such as myself is the benchtop itself. First off, it’s low. The benchtop is right below your kneecap. There are no vises, but there is a series of holes bored into it. The pattern of holes seems random at first, but after working with these benches for several months the holes began to make sense. Some of the holes restrained...
