Greetings
I’m looking for book recommendations on the history of woodworking, let’s say 18th century onward, Western. Ideally it would be a mile wide and an inch deep, and would give me some context on both individuals and on styles/movements.
As a fairly new newbie, I hear a lot of names (Maloof, Krenov, Esherick…) and styles (shaker, arts & crafts, mission…) and struggle a bit to put them in some wider context.
I would think any history book struggles with a trade off between comprehensiveness and detail. It’s hard to find a balance between hitting all the major points (comprehensive) and treating them each in a manner that isn’t ridiculously simplistic (detail). Any books that you found strike the balance? I understand there is a lot of material to cover, and it might not be “a book” but rather “a few books”.
thanks 🙂
Neal
Replies
Oh boy. I'll break this up a little. First, the Met in New York puts their out of print titles online, free to all. Look here:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/search-publication-results?searchType=C&Tag=&title=&author=&pt=0&tc=0&dept=0&fmt=0
> Oh boy. I'll break this up a little.
LOL, thanks John_C2. I totally understand that this question is a bear. I probably should have narrowed my focus, but I'm actually seeking a broad overview
Here are a few fantastic American furniture books everyone should have:
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/American_Furniture_in_The_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_Late_Colonial_Period_Vol_II_The_Queen_Anne_a?Tag=Furniture&title=&author=&pt=0&tc=0&dept=0&fmt=0
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/American_Furniture_in_the_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art_Vol_I_Early_Colonial_Period_The_Seventeenth_Century?Tag=Furniture&title=&author=&pt=0&tc=0&dept=0&fmt=0
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/American_Rococo_1750_1775_Elegance_in_Ornament?Tag=Furniture&title=&author=&pt=0&tc=0&dept=0&fmt=0
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/John_Townsend_Newport_Cabinetmaker?Tag=&title=&author=Heckscher&pt=0&tc=0&dept=0&fmt=0
What to find and read depends on exactly what it is about woodworking that you're interested in looking at, historically. History is a wide ranging subject and often gets mixed up with how-tos, biographies and even fan-gushes. To be frank, I've never come across a hsitory of woodworking written in any sort of academic fashion, with due regard paid to detailed research and composed in a disinterested way.
Perhaps the closest stuff can be found in various parts of The Lost Art Press. But even those books tend to be particular histories of a person, style or methods.
If anyone does know of something written in a more academic historical fashion, that describes the evolution of mainstream Western woodworking practices rather than looking at something very particular (period, person, style, etc.) , I'd love to have a read too.
Perhaps someone should put the suggestion to a few university history deprtments (assuming any are left in today's groves of academe)?
Lataxe
I'm not a fan of books that try to cover "The History of Furniture." It's like trying to do the history of all paintings, or the history of all architecture. They don't do a good job, and are unsatisfying. To me, anyway.
There are lots of great books on particular subjects, people, or periods. I enjoy those much more. Do you have a particular style or period you like? Maybe we can start there.
I like Shaker and Arts & Crafts, and I don't like post-modern or modern (not sure of the style/term). I prefer simple to highly ornate. Maybe what I'm looking for is less of a history and more of a taxonomy or schema. Part of the problem with individual woodworkers is that they also seem to be styles. Who is this Stickley fellow? Was he mission, or arts & crafts? (rhetorical) I know Krenov was a person, but was it also a style, or maybe a method, or an approach to woodworking? These are the kinds of questions bouncing around in my head. Experience and time will answer them, but without experience I'm seeking some guidance. An single book/resource probably does not exist, and I might just have to dive in and "build my answer" from the bottom up.
Then, of course, you have histories of furniture, and histories of furniture making (working wood). Some do both, but are usually mostly one or the other.
Then there are the how-tos, with construction details and cutlists.
There are tons of books on the Shakers. You literally could put them on a scale and they would weigh tons.
You can't go wrong with anything by Timothy Rieman, Jean Burks, or June Sprigg. If I could only own one, it would be Rieman and Burks's "Encyclopedia of Shaker Furniture." It's almost 600 pages of Shaker goodness. It's poorly made though. Really crappy binding.
Arts and Crafts furniture books tend to be more how-to and measured drawings than history. A couple of good histories are Kevin Tucker's "Gustav Stickley and the American Arts and Crafts Movement," and Roger Billcliffe's "Mackintosh Furniture."
A count of the woodworking books on my bookshelves comes to just over 200 physical volumes. (It was 50 volumes more before we moved house and I weeded them). They range from books on particular styles (Cotswold A&C, G&G, Mission, Shaker, etc.) through general how-tos (Joyce, Charlesworth, dozens of FWW volumes, etc.) to particular how-tos, concerning making joints, using tools, maintaining tools, design considerations, etc..
Not one is what you might call "A History of Woodworking in Britian" (Or the USA, or Germany, or Europe). I would like such a book because I would like a big map of the woodworking world that would point me to a-map-of-this and a-map-of-that era and location of woodworking practices, styles and the uses of what was made.
Despite having and reading those 200 books on the bookshelves, not to mention vast seas of web-based information, I still have no clear picture describing the wood working equivalent of "The History of The English Speaking Peoples"; or "European History 1450 - 1600". Such books are a great start in coming to grips with those vast oceans of particular histories that are certainly interesting but remain (in my head) disconnected.
Lataxe
It was my understanding from the original post that this is what the OP was looking for; and it’s what drew me to look at the responses, since I, too, would love a general history of wood-working/furniture making. I fear that the subject is, from the broader perspective, just arcane enough, and then combined with long enough, complex enough, and poorly documented enough, that no one’s felt up to the task. I certainly wouldn’t want to tackle it. But I’d pay well for my copy of such a work.
You identify the central issue, I think - a lack of documentation or other evidence of the sort closely examined by historians in an attempt to get at not just the doings but the mindset of long-gone folk as they practiced the minutiae of their crafts and associated businesses.
Chris Schwarz and his Lost Art Press have found themselves latching on to the very (very) few woodworking tomes of the times, along with a couple of famous toolchests, in an attempt to extract some history of woodworking ..... but there's so little evidence of wider practices that those very few books of past times have become rather over-emphasized - sometimes taken as somehow the essence of past woodworking. But it ain't necessarily so, rather like "the things that you're li'ble to read in the bible". :-)
There was once a series of articles in another US woodworking magazine that supposedly gave us some detailed history of past US woodworking. But the "evidence" offered seemed more like the fond imaginings of the author rather than any real history of the well-researched and documented kind.
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Histories of the traditional kind are all rather skewed, in The West, towards the antics of The Great & The Good, who were in charge at various times and so generated reams of documentation about their doings and the justifications for them.
But in reality there was a vast ocean of other history representing the many activities, attitudes, intents and so forth of "the common folk". Until the advent of mass education (enabling those folk to also generate writings about themselves and their lives) their doings were only described in vague and often disparaging terms in the writings of The Great & The Good.
Michel Foucault - a French "thinker" of the often obscure and radical ilk - proposed a different approach to delving for the histories not commonly contained in history books of his times. He proposed doing "archeology" in looking for the often ignored evidence about common-folk doings - as well as for the "unofficial" writings about The doings of The Great & The |Good.
Following such delving for the "pot shard" of past times (rather than the more usual grander stuff found in museums) he proposed the performance of "geneology" - an attempt to translate the "pot shards" into alternative histories of what actually occured in the wider society of past times, not to mention the unadmitted thinking and motives of The Great & The Good.
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Do woodworking "pot shards" exist to be found, though? I suspect that The Lost Art Press would have found more of them by now, if so. :-)
Lataxe
>...wood working equivalent of "The History of The English Speaking Peoples".... Such books are a great start in coming to grips with those vast oceans of particular histories...
Exactly!
I was just surfing around and noticed that many of the names I've heard of lived to a nice age:
Stickley 1858-1942 (84)
Esherick 1887-1970 (83)
Nakashima 1905-1990 (85)
Frid 1915-2004 (89)
Maloof 1916-2009 (93)
Krenov 1920-2009 (89)
Hard work and clean living.
One possibility, though the detail may be daunting, is "Furniture Treasury" by Wallace Nutting. He was an antique collector/seller and an avid photographer. He assembled some 5000 plates of American furniture along with detailed descriptions in two volumes which were last published as one book. A third volume compiles lists of designers along with some 1000 illustrations of design details and structure.
All are out of print (for now) but I was able to find used copies for my library. Here are the references:
Furniture Treasury (two volumes in one) by Wallace Nutting, first published in1928, my copy by The MacMillan Company, NY 1954
Furniture Treasury Volume III, first published in 1933, my copy by the MacMillan Company, NY, 15th printing (1979)
Another book worth considering is "Encyclopedia of Furniture Making" by Ernest Joyce copyright 1970, my copy was published in 1978 by Drake Publishers, NY. This is also out of print, and again I was easily able to find a used copy. Most of the book is devoted to the craft of making furniture, but there are close to 100 pages (out of about 500 total) on furniture examples, which cover a broad range of relatively modern designs grouped by classes of furniture.
I think both of these publications have been recommended by Chris Swartz of Lost Art Press. Sorry, neither of these seminal works distills the topic down into a gestalt.
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