Toolemera Blog

Another Christiansen Workbench

Over at The Village Carpenter, Kari shows us a workbench she has been using to hold up clutter. Now de-clutterized, it begins to look like the real thing. With some minor prodding, Kari came forth with the name on the bench vise collar: C. Christiansen Chicago ILL. Seems Mr. Christiansen's work is coming up all over with the spring flowers. Back a ways I featured another bench by the Christiansen family.

Shortly after that post, I heard from a grandson of Mr. Christiansen. Seems the family was in the workbench making business for quite some time. My memory seems to say up until the 1940's? I have to dig up that email. In short, they made workbenches for shops as well as for vocational schools and for the manual arts movement of the turn of the century.

Everyone who speaks of these benches raves about them. That they still exist and are in working order attests to the quality of their make. So if you have a Christiansen workbench, please step forward and make yourself known. It's high time we assembled a gallery of this families endeavors.

Get in touch with me through the email link on this blog if you have anything to contribute. Ads, catalogs, newspaper clippings, photographs, whatever. They say three times is a charm and this one fits the bill.

Till next (and awaiting a veritable landslide of C. Christiansen memorabilia)
Gary

Ephemeral History of Nathaniel Gould

 Recent articles in the Boston Globe and the New York Times featured the uncovering of the maker of some of Massachusetts' finest 18th Century furniture.

"An archival treasure hunt by two amateur researchers from the North Shore has unlocked a centuries-old secret and solved the mystery of the author of a handful of masterpieces of late Colonial craftsmanship: one of the preeminent builders of high-end, 18th-century furniture,  of Nathaniel Gould of Salem."

Aside from my fascination with anything 18th Century, this particular instance highlighted the convergence of classic history detecting, archives, ephemera and the internet. One of the searchers, Joyce King, decided to run a Google search (sorry, I refuse to use the term 'Googled')...

"The search revealed that the Massachusetts Historical Society owned documents belonging to Gould, donated by his lawyer, Nathaniel Dane, in 1835. The society had been compiling a computer database of its 12 million pages of documents for a decade, but the data had only a month or two earlier become available to public search engines like Google."

King and her compatriot, Kemble Widmer "...rushed to the archives, where they found the three vellum-covered ledgers, with Gould's neat cursive on pages browned by time, describing in minute detail his sales, listing his customers, and the circumstances of the transactions."

About a month ago I attended the annual New England Archivists conference at Simmons College. A few of the sessions that I attended focused on the use of various digital initiatives in the world of Archives. Video and audio preservation, document preservation and management and the ever-present "where are we going?". The preeminent question by attendees was "How do I do it?". The Massachusetts Historical Society sets a good example of "how to do it". Undertake the massive task of compiling a database and then make it available to public search engines.

What do I wish for next? A world wide version of the British National Archives search site.

Till next, Gary

Note: All quotes taken from the online Boston Globe, December 12, 2008, David Filipov.

1835 Shop Inventory

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Hear Ye! Come all present to witness the inventory of the worldly possessions of one Robert Yetton, late of Shelby County of the great state of Indiana!

Stephen Shepherd, over at the Full Chisel Blog, has offered up for our enlightenment and pleasure, a reading of the inventory of an early 19th Century craftsman by the name of Robert Yetton. Most likely a probate inventory, we have here the worldly goods of a farmer / craftsman of some experience. Not the usual farmers array of tools, this inventory includes lathe, cooperage, cabinet or joinery and even cobblers tools. Quite a varied assortment of tools, equipment, farm animals, farm equipment and oddments!

The other possibility that comes to mind is this was the assortment of tools and skills the above-average settler needed to setup a homestead. Self-sufficiency at it's best seems to describe the wide array of tools and skills the late Mr. Yetton brought to his venture. Or not? You be the judge. Read through this inventory and try to imagine Mr. Yetton at his chores. No Big Box stores, no online ordering, no Collectible Stanley Tools.

Perhaps Mr. Yetton provided his skills to the local community as services in return for goods? Will the real Mr. Yetton please stand up and tell us who he was?

Till next
Gary

Spear & Jackson Family Tree

I have no idea where this came from. While cleaning up a hard disk I found it hidden in a forgotten corner, little dustbytes swirling around it's virtual edges. Someone at sometime put together a comprehensive family tree of the most famous Spear & Jackson. The offspring, offshoots and absorbed names and companies span British tool maker history. To name just a few...

• William Hunt & Sons
• Various Tyzacks
• Spearwell Tools
• Wm. Edwards & Son
• Walden Scythes
• Neill Tools
• Phoenix Shovels and of course
• Spear & Jackson

I suspect that if we rounded up all the Spear & Jackson people and companies named in this list, the total would be larger than the population of the town I live in. A very interesting but totally daunting project would be a 'family tree' of a particular type of toolmaker, such as planemakers. Add in apprentices, partnerships, firms absorbed and so on. There must be some adventurous genealogist out there who is just dieing to tackle a project such as this? I'm not a genealogist, so I am excused.

Hey, how about a family tree program for tool makers? Sometimes I think I am absolutely brilliant. Not that I can create such a program, but it is a brilliant idea. Whoever decides to create one, please remember to give me credit as the progenitor of this marvelous idea.

Till next
Gary

PS: I forgot to include the present day Spear & Jackson

Leonard Bailey

Leonard Bailey. All you have to do is write the name and suddenly people sit up and take notice. Search engines go ga-ga. Wiki-people, well they don't do all that much in this case. A recent question regarding some specifics about Mr. Bailey led me to do some searching and lo, what did I find but not very much in any one place. Sure, there is a lot of stuff that has been written about Mr. Bailey, but it's mostly about the planes that he invented and a little about the try-squares that he designed. But what about Bailey the man? Why did he ditch the whole tool business and start making copy-presses? Sure, he lost some court battles with the Stanley Rule & Level Co., but why did he totally give up and go in such a different direction? Was his beard really so carefully trimmed?

As is my wont (I have to stick at least one archaic word in just to show that I am educated), I started looking up Mr. Bailey through various online sources. Tucked away in various corners of the internet are some interesting tidbits about Mr. Bailey. As I turn up more, I'll be adding them to the website, which is, if you have not yet bookmarked it, www.toolemera.com (shameless self-promotion runs rampant in blogs). Currently there are the summaries of the two Stanley Rule & Level Co. v Leonard Bailey court cases and a bunch of PDF file compilations of his patents... some of which may surprise you.

In time I'll be adding more information, including a bibliography of articles and books that discuss Mr. Bailey, the proceedings of the two court cases (hopefully, they've been ordered but I have to wait to see if the microfilm copies are legible) and whatever else I can dredge up. What you chose to do with all this information is your business. I'm just putting it together in one place to give Mr. Bailey his just due instead of the brief Wiki comments that so undervalue his genius.

If you really want to jump directly to the Bailey material, step over here.

Till next
Gary Roberts