1869 Carpenters' Shop

Earlier this week Joel Moskowitz, proprietor at Tools for Working Wood, posted a photo to his blog of a wonderful engraving he found while at the public library on the day after Thanksgiving.

The engraving, from the June 26, 1869 London Illustrated News, shows the interior of a "carpenters' shop"- really a cabinetmaker's shop if you ask me.  The men are building furniture here, not houses.

The library where I work owns a fairly complete run of this periodical, so I located the image in question and scanned it at high resolution to get a better look at it.  Here it is.

The level of detail in the image is wonderful.  In the foreground, two men work at low benches: one at a saw bench ripping a plank of lumber, the other sitting astride the stile of a panel frame while mortising it with a mallet and chisel.  As it so happens, I was working in just the same fashion just a short time ago, chopping mortises in the stile of the frame for the back panel of a book case I'm building.


Other delights abound in the image.  The man on the foreground left is working on a large glued up panel, perhaps a table top.  There are completed tables with lovely cabriole legs on the right.


I did a very small amount of manipulation of the image in Photoshop to clean up the image.  I removed some wording from the bottom of the image: after the title, on the original it says "-see page 641", a reference to the article in which the image is mentioned.  The article tells that the shop is part of a facility built on Vauxhall Bridge Road by the Guards, where soldiers could socialize and- in this shop- "learn the trade of carpentry."

If you'd like a print of the engraving to hang on your shop or office wall,  I've uploaded the image to imagekind.com at full resolution (600dpi).  From Imagekind you can select from a large number of sizes, paper types, mounting, matting and framing options.  For $16 you can get a 16"x10.5" print on enhanced matte paper.

Here is the full size scan if you'd like to download and print it on your own.  It is 6175x4048 pixels and about 25MB in size.

I hope you enjoy this image as much as I do!

Family weekend and Halloween

We've had two busy weekends, separated by a hurricane.  Crazy!

Two weekends ago was Family Weekend at the College of Wooster.  Maggie went down Friday afternoon to stay overnight in the dorm with her big sister Anna.  The rest of us followed on Saturday afternoon.  It was rainy and cold, but we managed to time our walks between rain showers.  

Here, we even caught the halftime show at the football game: marching band, pipes and drums, and Scottish highland dancers.

In the art building, they had crayons.  Made in the shape of cows.  I kid you not.

Siblings seeing the sights.

Monday following, the remnants of hurricane Sandy swept through, amplified by a nor'easter.  The combined effect was a mess in Cleveland as with many parts east of here.  Our home was spared the worst, but with power out and wires down in much of the city, Halloween trick-or-treating was postponed to Sunday.

Our little goblin didn't seem to mind.  This year, Grandma sent TWO costumes.  Here's Black Bart.

And for going out on a cold and rainy evening, the Fireman outfit was just the ticket!

Ship Ahoy! in NYC

We recently had the great opportunity to spend a weekend in New York City for the commissioning of the U.S.S. Michael Murphy, a brand new Navy destroyer.  Kim's brother-in-law Tom is the commanding officer of the ship, so we got a great up close experience of the ceremony and the ship itself.

But first, some sight seeing!  We enjoyed the enormous museum of natural history on the upper west side.  Here Grandma tells Sam what a good boy he is.

RAWR! Says T-Rex.  Or did Mommy say that?

Bill found his way to Carnegie Hall ("practice, practice, practice!") to get a good look at the brand-new Breguet clock in the lobby.  Mesmerizing!

Maggie, inexplicably to her dad, absolutely loved Times Square.

She and her dad visited Greenwich Village- the Strand bookshop and a campus tour of New York University.

Washington Square park on a sunny Friday afternoon.

We found a playground near the hotel for Sam and cousin Gabi to enjoy.

The main event was the commissioning ceremony.  We sat so close to the ship, it was hard to get a picture of the whole thing!

Tom gave us the official CO's tour, a fascinating look at the Navy's newest ship.

The ship's first commanding officer!

Wooster Homecoming

It wasn't exactly our homecoming at Wooster this weekend, but big sister/aunt Jane couldn't make it.  And we got a request late in the week to come visit Anna, so... why not?  The promise of a parade with bagpipes was too hard to deny.  So we drove down this morning for a little quality time on campus (and off, it turns out!) with Anna.

After the parade we took her out to lunch at the ever-yummy Broken Rocks Cafe in downtown Wooster, then a little drive to nearby Kidron for a visit to the massive general store Lehman's and a scoop of ice cream.  Here are a few pictures:

 With the fighting Scot mascot at the end of the parade!

Anna and Sam in front of her dormitory- the same one that housed Aunt Jane in her freshman year, just a few years ago!

Sammy getting a piggy back!

Surprises from the stacks

We've been working on an inventory project at work, identifying books that were not added to our catalog when we transitioned from cards-in-drawers to records-in-computers about 30 years ago.  We've come across some real gems, and here are just two that struck a chord with the woodworker in me.

Both are academic, but completely fascinating to anyone who has an interest in period work.  Here are two illustrations from the books- on the left are two photographs of bodgers (the term for chairmakers), one installing legs to a seat, the other bending what will become the back of a Windsor chair.  On the right is a reproduction of an image of an early gang saw mill.

From The Early Sawmills of New Jersey:

Sawmills, unlike gristmills, were not places of romantic interest.  Although the early sawmills were run by wooden machinery, the water wheel vibrated the building, there was no odor of ground meal, no millstones to rumble, no dusty miller drawing in fat bags of grist, and no miller's daughter to enhance the surroundings.  Instead of gently descending mealy showers, the air was full of sawdust, bad language of the men struggling with logs, and the noise and screeching of the saw.  Sawmills were places for work and not for idle gossip or the exchange of neighborhood happenings.

Camp Grandma

At the end of July we left the sweltering heat in Cleveland and traveled to the beautiful and delightfully cool Pacific northwest for a week at what we lovingly refer to as Camp Grandma.

Walking the beach at low tide in the morning, when the water is smooth as glass.

Sam and Dad made a rhubarb pie.  This is how they grow it on Tanda Ave., so how could we NOT whip up a pie?  (No we didn't eat the leaves!)

Each room seems to have its own collection of toys.  This take-apart truck is a favorite.

At Uncle Roger and Aunt Kathy's house, cracking fresh crab under the tutelage of Roger.

Uncle Roger spinning yarns.

We enjoyed taking the kayaks out several times.  This time Sam had a short ride with Daddy.

Maggie in the front of the tandem.

Sam had plenty of fun on the beach.  "ooooh, that's cold!"

A couple of ol' salts launching Mommy and Sam.

On a charity walk along Silverdale's lovely Clear Creek Trail. 

We had plenty of rides on Grandpa's tractor too.  Here's Sam with some Lamberg cousins.

Thanks Grandpa!

Maggie got a few turns behind the wheel.  Don't drive it into the drink!

HEY! SAMMY'S TURN!

Sam and Mom taking a spin.

The lad's an Emmons boy, sitting on the counter helping out Grandpa.

From atop the Space Needle, a beautiful view from above the Emerald City.

Colorado Reunion Trip

Here are a handful of photos from our recent trip to beautiful Colorado.  We had two aims for this trip: a few days in Boulder with my friend Dennis, and then a few days at the YMCA of the Rockies for a Claspy Clan family reunion.  We had great success in both!

First up was Boulder.  Sam enjoyed the kid-friendly Pearl Street pedestrian mall, which has several play areas for small ones.  Here he is with big sister Anna and a great big bunny.

Right across the street from the historic Hotel Boulderado (where we were fortunate to stay) was a rank of rental bicycles, very reminiscent of Paris Velib stations.  Boulder is a bike-friendly city!

Bill and Dennis, catching up over brunch at the restaurant Snooze.

Dennis explaining the fine points of pea gravel to Sammy.  Not for eating, for concrete sublayers!

Day two we took a short hike in one of the many Boulder green space parks, this time the Chautauqua park.

The Veseys arrived on Thursday and stayed in Boulder overnight.  We initiated Gabi to the playground and ate delicious pizza at Pizzaria Locale.

Friday found us in Estes Park at the YMCA of the Rockies.  It is directly adjacent to the Rocky Mountain National Park and couldn't be in a more beautiful setting.

Sammy gets his first popsicle.

 The Claspy Clan!

We found refuge in the shade where and when we could- here in the evening on the patio above the dining hall.

Sunday we headed into Rocky Mountain National Park.  This lobo greeted us shortly after we entered the park.

At- or near- the summit of Trail Ridge Road, we stopped for a break at the Alpine visitor center.

At about 11,000 feet, these elk could relax in the cool mountain air.

It was a great trip!