Signpost is a free ezine from Bob Dillon Windsor Chairs. It is the
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***Signpost***
Issue No. 12 -- March 4, 2001
Contents:
- News
- Legs and Other Turned Parts
- Let Freedom Reign by Kristen Hanley Cardozo
NEWS:
A few months ago I started working on a new project and I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about it. It's a new ezine (and web site) called "Stories of Adventure." These are stories I have found all over the internet. They are written by explorers, scientists, adventurers and just everyday folks. The first issue will not be out for a little while, but I have a few stories already posted on the site so you can see what it is about. On the home page you will find a list of categories; the ones marked with an asterisk contain a story or two. I do hope you will take a look and consider becoming a subscriber.
In this issue I continue our study of the three "systems" of a Windsor chair with a few words about the legs, stretchers and arm-posts -- the parts which are turned on the lathe.
The second article is one I bumped into in my internet travels. It's a little longer than I usually prefer, so I have not included my usual third piece.
And again, I hope you will indulge me with an adventurous visit to my new project. And by the way, if you have or know of any stories I might like to use, I'd love to hear about them.
Bye for now.
Until next time,
Bob
Legs and Other Turned Parts
DESIGN:
The baluster-and-ring pattern of a Windsor chair leg owes its origins to the William and Mary period of the early eighteenth century. The earliest American-made chairs from Philadelphia were given legs virtually identical in pattern to the rush-bottom chairs and daybeds being made at the time -- a baluster-and-ring upper section with a cylindrical lower part ending in a ball foot. Middle stretchers featured the ball-and-ring pattern common to early Queen Anne chairs, which was also a holdover from William and Mary. The side stretchers were already relatively simple except that the bobbin (the fat part) was off-center toward the back legs.
The arm-posts on these early chairs were installed vertically at the front corners of the seat. This too imitates those same stick-built, rush-bottom chairs whose arm-posts actually are extensions of the front legs.
Each set of cylinder-and-ball legs had to be made specifically for a chair of known seat height. The ball foot could not be radically trimmed to adjust the height of the chair after the legs had been installed. This posed no problems so long as Windsor chairs were being built as custom items in small numbers. But as they became a high-volume product something new had to be developed, and that was the tapered leg. Tapered legs could be made a bit extra long and produced in quantity, as they often were, sometimes by the thousands. Once installed on a chair they could be left untrimmed until purchased and then cut to the customer's needs -- by the chairmaker or the customer.
The stretchers were also simplified at this time. The ball-and-ring medial stretcher was reduced to a simple bobbin, or a bobbin with a pair of rings. The side stretchers were produced symmetrically, the bobbin pulled forward to the center.
By 1785 mass production, and the rise of the Federal styles, led to further simplification. Small shops gave way to factories. Master craftsmen became craftsmen/merchants by adding "warerooms" to display their furniture. The Federal styles called for simpler lines and this suited the new chair industry. Bamboo turnings became the pattern of choice, and these could be produced by men of lesser skill.
MATERIAL:
The main requirement for the legs and other turned parts of a chair is strength. For this only the denser hardwoods will do (accept no substitute). Turners also prefer woods particularly suitable to their kind of work. This calls for close grain woods such as maple, birch and beech. Ring-porous hardwoods such as oak, ash and hickory were also used, but they are less friendly to the turner. These trees develop large, weak "vessel" cells at the beginning of each growing season; they are plainly visible as pores on the end of a board or piece of firewood. After that initial fast growth, ring-porous hardwoods settle down to produce the hard, dense cells that, overall, give these woods the strength they are known for. But those pesky vessel cells lead to planes of weakness that can cause pieces of the finer details to chip off -- sometimes even as the turner is producing them.
Maple was and is the most common wood used for the turned parts of Windsor chairs. It grows abundantly throughout the range of the early chairmakers. In northern New England birch was (and is) seen more in the woods and so was used more in the chairmaker's shop.
In northern Minnesota we have both hard and soft maples, but in my back yard they are mostly younger trees growing underneath an older stand of poplar (aspen) and birch. Therefore, you will find birch legs on my chairs -- and popple burning in the wood stove to keep the shop warm.
The following is reprinted with permission from Kristen Hanley Cardozo
Let Freedom Reign
In a country that offers many opportunities not to be found elsewhere, it is easy to feel lucky. Not patriotic, flag-waving, apple pie on the fourth of July lucky, merely grateful not to be someplace else, someplace that offers less in the way of financial growth. The greatness of these United States rests on the fact that anyone has an opportunity to own a television or operate a computer. The financial distance between rich and poor is narrower than that of a third world country, and for this we are grateful.
One of the problems that has come out of our desire for equality and freedom is that we have not taken the time to understand what kind of freedom we are referring to. In a country with no unifying race, ethnicity, religion, or culture, we are left with the uniting factor of a consumer culture. The basis of this capitalistic society is at the core of our founding fathers' plans. Unlike any other country in the world, the United States was founded with a blueprint. The Enlightenment had brought education and philosophy to the English citizens who sat down and planned our country. As much as we have deified them today, it is easy to forget that these were businessmen protecting their interests. This does not make their results any less great, but it is interesting to note how different this country is from those founded by warriors or religious groups. America separated from Britain on the basis of commercial interest at a time when nearly every American was also a British citizen. A handful of men made the decision for their fellow (and mostly unwilling) British citizens that the time had come for secession.
The country did separate, however, and since then it has followed the Constitution laid out for it by those first shrewd traders and gentlemen farmers. In the eyes of these well-educated patriarchs, all men were created equal - as long as those men were not women, poor, illiterate, or a color other than white. These precautions sound barbarous to our modern sensibilities, but they were a practical insurance in the late eighteenth century. The founding fathers didn't want people voting unless they knew what they were voting about and, most importantly, unless they had a vested interest in the vote. A literate male landowner would vote the right way since he had a potent concern in seeing his land value increase. These were the people who were qualified to make decisions, it was thought. There are four Constitutional Amendments that apply to the subject of voting rights. They are the 15th (1870), the 19th (1920), the 24th (1964), and the 26th (1971), respectively. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, on account of sex, by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax, or on account of age. These changes were made due to political concerns of the times. Interestingly enough, no Constitutional Amendment refers to literacy.
This past election, we saw the rights of voters in action, and we learned that this country is still a confederation of states with no unifying method or rules regarding ballots. We also learned that the rights of voters vary from state to state, and that these rights are not as airtight as we, the people, would like to believe. Whichever side you believe rightfully won, it is still clear that nothing about a national election is clear. Is this what the founding fathers intended? Not exactly. And yet, maybe, yes, it is.
When the Constitution was drafted, it was drafted as a result of the failure of the Articles of Confederation. Many states, particularly the Southern states, had agreed to a confederation in the first place because it was just that: a confederation. States' rights were supreme in a confederation, and many states at the time were almost like sovereign nations. Currency and laws varied from border to border, and most states in the South wanted to keep their sovereignty. When the Constitution was written, many Southern states (and some Northern states) would not sign unless states' rights were upheld. While many of the founding fathers from Northern port towns, like Boston, felt that a unified nation with primary power given to the national government was the solution, there were many dissenters. In order to preserve the union, states' rights were given greater credence. We are a republican democracy, true, but we are also, to a lesser degree, a confederation of states. To how much of a lesser degree was determined in the Civil War.
What does all of this mean? European rejects and dissenters populated the United States. By the time the Revolution rolled around, however, most of the population had been born on American soil. The Enlightenment had swept Europe, creating an intelligentsia or middle class of non-nobility scholars. Rich Americans were able to learn about these changes, and the men who became the Constitutional Congress were very familiar with the prominent works of the period. Even the noblest of men will work hard to protect his own interests, and there were too many men in the Congress for them all to be noble. A group of well-educated, intelligent men who worked in trade, whose main interests revolved around preserving their businesses and families and their way of life, sat down and wrote a document. They knew that their work was not perfect, and they left us room to change. However, the basic unspoken principles of maintaining a trade based economy and of holding the nation together, whatever the cost, have remained. Perhaps it is important to remember that we are only one letter switch away from becoming the Untied States.
Sources
- The Windsor Style in America, by Charles Santore
- Queen Anne Furniture: History, Design and Construction, by Norman Vandal
- Kristen Hanley Cardozo
- ThemeStream
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