woodworking

• Globe library card catalog refinishing assistance needed

  
  Knowing our extreme interest in old library card catalogs – specifically those made by Globe, the acknowledged masters of this particular furniture item – reader Gerry Comninos writes us the following from South Africa; photographs of his unit are available in our woodwork set over at Flickr:

  I am busy restoring one of The
  Globe company’s earlier pieces of library furniture.

  I have recently acquired a Globe card index file which is about 100 years old. It has a patent notice – the patent was filed by a certain gentleman with the very flamboyant name of Royal Lee Vilas in 1897.

  There are library cards in the drawers indicating a date of 1908. The index cards can be “locked” by turning the knobs on the drawer front.

  I intend to restore the cabinet to its former glory. As you can see the desk top is missing and the roller top has been broken. Other than that the cabinet is in perfect working order. All the drawers slide perfectly as do the card lock mechanisms even after years in our rather harsh climate!

  I have searched the web for a similar piece for reference purposes but to no avail.

   I am trying to collect information regarding this cabinet and I wonder if it is at all possible to obtain (or if you could tell me where to get) the following information.

  1. Any image of the complete cabinet and the missing top so that I may replicate it faithfully.
  2. Do you perhaps have a copy of the original brochures or
     catalogues of this cabinet?

  Does anyone have advice for Mr. Comninos? If so, please post it in the comments here!

• restaining, bleaching or otherwise altering stained wood

  Hot on the heels of my (cranky) criticism of a newspaper columnist suggesting painting wood trim comes a very good question from one of our readers. Anyone have good advice?

  What would you recommend for real wood trim and doors but that are in a stain the owner hates?

  I don't have a period house (it is maybe 10 yrs old) so real restoration is not an issue.  Unfortunately, however, I hate the orangy-tinted stain that is all over the house (no, I'm not the original homeowner).  I've gotten used to it over the years, but I still don't like it.

  For a 2 story house, with baseboard, door trim and doors plus stairs, the idea of having it all refinished is a nightmare. I can't imagine how much it would cost, and so painting over it seems like a much more manageable and affordable solution. (esp when the doors and trim are not a nice flat surface, but instead have a lot of grooves).

  For someone who can handle painting but not refinishing, please convince me! [for example, would it be more affordable to try to sell the trim/doors and start from scratch??]

• Live Auctioneers has plenty of treats

  
  Live Auctioneers are a gateway / aggregator to hundreds of live (and non-live) antique auctions. Among the thousands of items viewable and biddable, there are hundreds of terrific items of interest to Arts & Crafts aficionados. Here are a few of my favorites from upcoming auctions:

  • wrought iron umbrella stand – or enormous vase
  • a very pretty unsigned mantel clock with green slag glass side panels
  • Roycroft "American Beauty" hammered copper vase
  • interesting Mexican Campeche chair, based on a William Spratling design
  • two 1904 New Haven Clock Co. mantel/shelf clocks
  • a lot of three simple pieces of A&C pottery: one unsigned, one Bauer, one Zanesville
  • unsigned A&C nightstand
  • somewhat ornate English A&C mahogany hallstand
  • gorgeous Wahliss nouveau vase
  • simple & austere Gus Stickley four-drawer server
  • a set including Roycroft brass-washed candlesticks, and a Heintz sterling-on-bronze vase and ashtray
• old craft, new tech

  
  Rainier Spehl, a woodworker specializing in display materials and exhibition stands for clients like Nike, Dior and Gucci, has built a wooden laptop slipcase for Apple portable computers. There's no price – we assume that if you have to ask… Spehl us developing his own line of furniture and products (including some interesting public compositions) and takes commissions from a variety of private clients including the large firms mentioned above.

  Some of his work is a little stark for my taste, but there's no denying his excellent integration of grain and texture into otherwise very modern contexts. A Craftsman approach to materials pops up in the most unexpected places!

  Alternatively, check out Brian Kelly's pretty plywood & cork laptop case.

• traditional meets modern in Andong, South Korea

  

  We just got back from a week in Korea where we met & from which we brought home our adopted daughter. During the trip, our old friend Youngji and her sister Eunji drove us all over the country, including a stop in Andong to visit with their parents, who were staying at their "winter house," an apartment in that city. Just outside the city limits sits the "summer house," which their father designed a few years back and hired traditional craftspeople to build.

  The house is new, but traditionally-designed (or at least traditionally-inspired). Architecturally it was a marvel: simple and humble on the outside, but large and beautiful inside. It was wide and low, with a small second story on one side – housing only two small square bedrooms with windows on three sides of each and a bit of storage. The staircase itself was very steep, and with the open spaces underneath looked more like a ladder – or a bookcase!

  The wall of screen doors pictured here opens in two ways: the individual panes can be unlatched and swung inward, or the entire wall can be unlatched and swung upward, where its free end can be hung on hand-forged iron fixtures attached to the ceiling beams. This allows summer breezes and light to fill the entire house when the weather is good. The house sits aside numerous rolling orchards and wide-open farmland – surprising in this country that is mostly steep mountains and valleys – and is situated right on the base of a low set of hills looking out over this open land.

  The entire house was full of great wood accents, all of them just as much architectural as decorative. The master bedroom, in a sort of satellite peninsula built onto the side of the house with a mudroom/airlock – which acts as a temperature buffer between it and the main house – is built on top of a giant and foot-thick stone slab; a wood or charcoal fire is lit below it, from outside the house, which warms the floor (the rest of the house uses the more typical steam-heated floors common throughout Korea, underneath beautiful Eucalyptus-looking wood floors in the main rooms and a soft organic flooring somewhat like Marmoleum, in the same pale yellow that I saw in many other Korean homes, in the bedrooms).

  I am told that no nails or screws were used in the structural work of the house – all the beams fit together, and the walls are made of yellow clay brick covered in a mud mixture, and then wallpapered with rice paper.

  The unique coffee table shown here, flush on the floor (the house had no seating other than thin but soft cushions, as all sitting happens directly right on the heated floor), was made from the base of a 300-year old fallen tree. The house has very little furniture – a few small bedside tables, a wooden chest or two, and a big beautiful rough-hewn bookshelf off the master bedroom, so the intricate beauty of something like this table really shines.

• Voysey clocks & more

  from our friend Christopher Vickers:

  Following on from the CFA Voysey Clocks postings here last August [Voysey clocks; Chris Vickers & Voysey], readers may be interested in Christopher Vickers new page featuring many of the period Voysey clocks still known to exist.

  Chris would be very interested to receive further information / images of Voysey clocks, or really anything at all designed by Voysey!

• Gustav Stickley library table, from the Metropolitan Museum collection

  

  Library table, ca. 1906
  Gustav Stickley (American, 1858–1942); Craftsman Workshops
  Syracuse, New York
  Oak, leather; H. 30 in. (76.2 cm), Diam. 55 in. (139.7 cm)
  Gift of Cyril Farny, in memory of his wife, Phyllis Holt Farny, 1976 (1976.389.1)

  Inspired by William Morris, Gustav Stickley founded The United Crafts
  (later known as Craftsman Workshops) in 1898. Stickley was greatly
  influenced by Ruskin and Morris, his travels to Europe, and important
  contemporary journals such as The Studio and Deutsche Kunst und Dekoration.
  Initially managing the firm as a guild, Stickley participated in
  profit-sharing with his employees, but as the operation grew, regular
  factory standards were implemented. The Craftsman line was introduced
  to the public in 1900. This hexagonal library table is made of oak with
  a leather top ostensibly adhered by overt circular tacks, and utilizes
  visible joinery with tenon-and-key joints. Illustrated in the November
  1902 issue of The Craftsman, the Arts and Crafts periodical
  published by Gustav Stickley between 1901 and 1916, the hexagonal
  library table became a popular item in Stickley’s sales inventory.

• truly amazing tool chests

  
  Oobject, which presents short photo essays of interesting collections of objects, recently put up this terrific selection of toolboxes. Certainly my favorite is number 1, organ and piano maker Henry O. Studley‘s amazing hand-crafted toolbox (pictured), which is as much a piece of art as a box for storing tools in (many of the tools look to be custom made as well). That particular item is now in private hands but is loaned to the Smithsonian from time to time for special exhibits.

  Other highlights include a 1949 machinist’s chest and the sublime Wohn Geist woodworker’s toolchest.

• wanted: furniture restorer near Sacramento CA

  A reader has an urgent need for someone to repair an antique wooden table and possibly some chairs; please contact me if you have a recommendation.

• Thonet Model 14

  
  There’s a wonderful article in the November 7 International Herald Tribune on the Thonet Model 14 (aka the "Thonet Bentwood Chair"), which might be the world’s most popular model of chair. You might never have seen this six-piece wonder, but one glance and you’ll know you’ve sat in dozens of them:

  The No.14 was the result of years of technical experiments by its
  inventor, the 19th-century German-born cabinetmaker Michael Thonet. His
  ambition was characteristically bold. Thonet wanted to produce the
  first mass-manufactured chair, which would be sold at an affordable
  price (three florins, slightly less than a bottle of wine). Many of his
  rivals had tried to make similar chairs, but failed and, at first,
  Thonet seemed doomed to failure too. When his German workshop was
  seized by creditors in 1842, he moved his family to Austria and opened
  a workshop in Vienna, determined to try again.

  Eventually Thonet succeeded. When the No.14 was launched in 1859,
  it was the first piece of furniture to be both attractive and
  inexpensive enough to appeal to everyone from aristocrats to
  schoolteachers. By 1930, some 50 million No.14s had been sold, and
  millions more have been snapped up since then. Brahms sat on one to
  play his piano, as did Lenin while writing his political tracts, and
  millions of us have perched comfortably on them in cafés. Another
  admirer was the modernist pioneer Le Corbusier. "Never was a better and
  more elegant design and a more precisely crafted and practical item
  created," he enthused.