André-Jacob Roubo With All the Precision Possible Roubo on Furniture Making Donald C. Williams, Michele Pietryka-Pagán & Philippe Lafargue André-Jacob Roubo With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture Making A translation of L’Art du menuisier Published by Lost Art Press LLC in 2017 26 Greenbriar Ave., Fort Mitchell, KY 41017, USA Web: http://lostartpress.com Copyright © 2017 by Donald C. Williams ISBN: 978-0-9978702-2-0 Editor: Christopher Schwarz Copy editing: Megan Fitzpatrick, Kara Gebhart Uhl Photography: E.M. Ginger/42-Line for the plates; Authors of essays for shop photos Book design and production: Wesley B. Tanner/Passim Editions Index: Suzanne Ellison Distribution: John Hoffman all rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review This book was printed & bound in the United States of America Printing by Signature Book Printing, signature-book.com In memory of Melvin J. Wachowiak Jr. Friend, colleague and Fellow Traveler on the road named “I wonder if...” Donald C. Williams Table of Contents Annotations by Christopher Schwarz, Don Williams, Michael Mascelli, Philippe Lafargue and Jonathan Thornton noted in bold Preface xi A Key to the Text xiv The Woods Appropriate for Joinery 3 Section I. The Different Qualities of Wood 3 Section II. Fashioning and Stacking of Wood 7 Section III. The Cutting of Wood 13 The Art of Assembly, its Uses and Proportions 21 Section I. Different Ways to Elongate Wood 25 Some Tools Belonging to Woodworkers, Their Different Types, Forms and Uses 29 Section I. Tools of the Shop 32 Section II. The Tools Belonging to the Workmen 33 Section III. Some Tools Appropriate for Cutting and Planing the Wood 34 The Plate 11 Workbench: How it (Really) Works 38 Make Roubo’s ‘Winding Sticks’ 54 Section IV. The Tools for Marking and Making Joints 59 Section V. The Tools for Fretwork, and those for Cutting the Straight and Curved Mouldings 76 The Art of Drawing 89 Section I. The Way to Take Measurements 89 The Way to Draw the Work on the Plan 93 The Way to Prepare Joinery to Receive Carved Ornaments 95 Section II. The Way to Glue Wood 99 The Way to Construct Columns in Wood; Bases, Capitals, Entablature and Pedestals 103 Section III. The Way of Gluing Curved Wood 109 vii viii WITH ALL THE PRECISION POSSIBLE Joinery in Furniture, in General, and the Different Types 112 Section I. The Tools and Woods appropriate for Furniture 114 Ancient Furniture in General 115 Some Different Types of Seats in Use at Present 119 Section II. The Description of Folding Chairs, Stools, Benches, etc. Their Forms, Proportion and Construction 120 Section III. Descriptions of all sorts of [side] chairs, their decorations, forms, proportions and construction 126 The Way to Prepare Seats to Receive Fabric Ornamentation 135 Roubo on Upholstery 137 Section IV. The Upholstery of Chairs with Caning and the Art of Caning in General 141 The Way to Prepare Seats for Caning 141 Selection of the cane, the way of splitting it and the caners’ tools 145 Various Methods of Weaving and Diverse Operations of the Caner 149 Different Sorts of Seating Forms, Proportions & Construction 155 Roubo, Meet Reality: The Making of A Classical French Chairmaker 164 Section I. Description of all the major seats, like canapés, sofas, ottomans, etc. 181 Section II. Description of Private Apartment Seats, like Bathing-tubs, Demi-bathing tubs, etc. 193 Of Beds in General and the Different Sorts 201 Section I. The Beds of France: Forms, Proportions & Construction 202 Canopies of Beds, Commonly Called Pavilions or Imperials; Their Forms and Construction 210 Section II. Description of Polish-style Beds, their Proportions, Shapes & Decoration 220 Section III. Description of different types of campaign Beds, their shapes and construction 226 Section IV. Description of Daybeds, some Cradles and Cots 235 Tables in General and the Different Types 239 Section I. Different Forms and Constructions of Dining Tables 245 Section II. Game Tables and their different types, forms and constructions 249 Description of a Billiard Table, its form, proportion and construction 249 Description of Gaming Tables, their form, proportions and construction 261 Section III. Tables for writing and their different types, forms and constructions 270 Description of Dressing Tables and Night Tables, and others 293 Description of Screens and Windbreaks; their forms and proportions 296 Case Pieces Known under the General Name of Large Pieces 301 Section I. Description of Armoires; their decoration, proportions and construction 302 Description of Buffets; their forms, proportions, decoration & construction 309 Description of Commodes; their forms, proportions and construction 315 ROUBO ON FURNITURE MAKING ix Of Solid Cabinetry Or Assembly in General 325 Section I. Description of the Tools of the Furniture Maker, their assembly and how to use them 327 Section II. Basic Elements on the Part of the Art of Turning necessary for the Furniture Maker 331 Some Screw Taps and Wooden Dies used by Cabinetmakers 343 The Machines Appropriate for Making Fluting for Cylinders and Cones 347 Description of the Machine commonly called the tool for waves 358 Reproducing and Using Moxon’s ‘Waving Engine’ 366 Section III. Different Locksmithing Tools for the Furniture Maker 378 The Way to fit the iron work for cabinetry 392 The Manner of polishing iron and copper relative to cabinetry 402 Section IV. Different Kinds of Solid or Assembled Cabinetry in General 404 Description of different sorts of embroidery frames 405 Description of a printing cabinet 417 Description of Gueridons and Small Tables 427 Description of Different Forms of Desks 430 Necessaries and Other Types of Boxes 437 Afterword to ‘Roubo on Furniture’ 443 Appendix: André-Jacob Roubo 445 Index 451 Preface The challenge of the Roubo Experience is that his unparalleled treatise, l’Art du menuisier is both paralyzingly complex and complete while being frustratingly laconic. This par- adox is due in great part to the purpose of the tomes, namely to instruct and reveal the process of integrating the design of furniture with the task of building it. This is demonstrated nowhere better in With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture Making than the chapters near the beginning of our volume wherein he assumes the reader’s competence in executing fundamen- tal joinery. While in our contemporary missives there are exhaustive and sometimes overheated expositions on this or that particular joint – and there are even entire volumes and videos on the execution of one specific joint – Roubo undertakes no such trifle. His confidence that the reader who picks up his volumes is already well familiar with (and competent in) the design, function and fabrication of the joinery necessary is jarring to our sensibilities because he does not coddle us through the process. Perhaps the briefest chapter in Roubo on Furniture Making is the one titled “The Art of Assem- bly, Its Uses and Proportions.” To the extent that Roubo provides any general instruction on join- ery, this 2,000-word essay is all there is. As for the dovetail, from which all things flow for modern woodworking cognoscenti, Roubo expends the grand total of fewer than 500 words; for mortises and tenons, around 800 words, and all of that being consumed with exhortations of making beau- tiful transitions from one axis to the other via integral mitered mouldings; for scarf joints, also around 800 words but only if you include his brief recitation on scarf-joined arches (modern man- ufacturers will no doubt be delighted at his illustration of doweled joints in Plate 10, fig. 12). I took great delight in the 18th-century French representation of “Jupiter’s Thunderbolts” and its related siblings in Plate 10, and challenge any reader to distinguish between those and Chinese furniture-making joints of the 17th century, or Japanese temple builder’s joints of the centuries preceding even that. I am not suggesting any relationship other than that the creativity of the human experience when applied to the identical materials science and engineering problems often results in similar if not identical responses. As a reader of Roubo myself I find the theme presented throughout Roubo on Furniture Making is one of unity, unifying what I know about the character of wood, what I know about the processes of fashioning wood into pieces for functional performance, and unity of the eye, heart and soul in seeking beauty as the end result of bench work. I am not suggesting or even implying that Roubo’s treatise is not profoundly practical. Though never formulaic, unless that is called for, he attempts xi xii WITH ALL THE PRECISION POSSIBLE to guide the craftsman to accomplish in reality what was to that point only a vision, a dream, an idea. In the vernacular of the moderne, he did not major in the minors. Were he to devolve into detailed expositions on tool sharpening or a puerile question as to the pins-first vs. tails-first debate he would have never accomplished his goal. I am fairly certain that such a rhetorical exercise would have been nonsensical to him and his contemporaries. Instead his starting point is often our ending point. The probable response in the ateliers of his day to a craftsman admiring a nicely made dovetail would have been a smack on the head. Skilled execution of tasks was simply the expectation and lexicon of that era. Exactly what the specific task was to be accomplished was an entirely different element in the equation then and now, and it is where he expended his didactic energies.