Jogge's Crew

A few weeks ago I had the great fortune to take a class with Swedish woodcarver Jogge Sundqvist at Lie Nielsen Toolworks in Warren, Maine.  For those who don't know about Jogge, he and his father Wille have had a tremendous influence on green woodworking in America, going well back through the 70s, when they started teaching classes in Swedish carving at Drew Langsner's Country Workshops.  Of course, Drew later got Peter Follansbee started in the field, who then went on to research and popularize seventeenth century joinery and carving techniques.  Peter also studied with the Sundqvists, and carves wonderful spoons himself.  Given the influence these three men have had over green woodworking in America, I felt truly blessed to have all three present in Maine.  Drew and his wife Louise joined us for the second day. The chance to ask questions and get to know these great craftsmen was a real eye opener, and has left my head spinning with ideas.

Another excellent part of this weekend is that I got to reconnect with Dave Fisher, an amazing bowl carver who I got to know a few years ago when he agreed to teach me some of his methods.  Since then we have stayed in contact, corresponding about woodworking and teaching (we both teach high school history.)  We signed up for the class together, and agreed that I would pick him up from Logan airport and we would drive north and camp out behind Lie Nielsen (when I asked the folks at Lie Nielsen if camping was OK, they said "not only is that OK, it is kinda awesome.")  What was also cool was that others would be camping out with us.  Ben Kirk, a great spoon carver from Maryland who I got to know last summer at Peter Follansbee's spooncarving course, was camping out at Lie Nielsen as well.  He also brought his lovely wife Chrissy (who puts up with an amazing amount of spoon talk with a smile)  and his friend (and bandmate) Ryan.  We had a great time kicking back in the evenings over beer and spoon talk.

I learned a lot during the class and in long conversations with Dave and Ben--too much to run through here.  With Jogge we carved spreaders and distaffs (for wooing women) and talked technique.  Jogge taught the basic grasps and helped me with my "can opener" and "cross thumb" motions.  I also learned a lot from Dave and Jogge about engraving, including advantages to different tool profiles, engraving grasps, and how to carve "uphill" and still get smooth results.  Again, too much to describe in one post.

Dave and I laughed at what slow progress we were making on our projects, too busy talking with great people to make much headway.  And those people were really what inspired me the most, beyond all the technique talk.  I got to talk with Masashi Kutsuwa, a Japanese woodworking professor who had flown in for this class and a pilgrimage to Dickinson Reach.  We spoke of Japanese craft and how green woodworking had started taking hold in the US.  I got to chat with Peter Lamb about his friend Bill Coperthwaite's wonderful experiment in living.  I never got to talk as much as I would have liked with Kenneth, a boat builder from Maine who was helping teach the class, or many of my classmates, most of whom seem to have been crafting in their various fields for more years than I have.  Such a wealth of knowledge...  That is what makes these courses truly great.  The people.

Photo by Colin Hayward

Jogge finished his class with a summary of the "four walls" of craft that bound and shape our work: material, tools, people and tradition.  I certainly felt the importance of "people" on my craft this weekend.  A few days later, one of my classmates, William MacIntrye, posted a great question on our email list following the workshop: "I have been able to identify with all but one; the wall of tradition. Since we, as modern woodworking Americans, may not have knowledge to create objects such as the wooden spoon, knife, bowl, or distaff handed down from generation... How do we define our tradition? What object do we connect with if we haven't been around it our entire lives?"  His question really made me consider how important people like Jogge, Drew and Peter are for us, because in many ways, they are our tradition...

On Drying Oils, by Don Nalezyty

Many thanks to Lee Stoffer of Covert Crafts in the UK for filming Don's talk at Spoonfest on drying oils.  Really informative.  Lee also makes amazing spoons, and his chipcarving is extraordinary.

Spoon Design Kit

Got a great little parcel today from Don Nalezyty. He has come up with a nifty tool for laying out spoons.  The Spoon Design Kit is sort of a french curve for spoons, with various forms and shapes that you can trace to adjust your spoon designs. Everything from different bowl sizes to handle shapes to finials.  Even has one card for basketweave kolrosing and the like, and the whole bunch fits in your wallet.  I'm looking forward to giving it a go.

A deal at $15

For more info or to get yourself one, see his facebook page.  https://www.facebook.com/DonNalezytyCrafts?pnref=story

"By Hand and Eye" by George Walker and Jim Tolpin

I have been reading and rereading parts of "By Hand and Eye" by George Walker and Jim Tolpin for a few weeks now, digesting the implications (available here: http://lostartpress.com/products/by-hand-eye-1). It is a fascinating read, and its effect on me has been a bit like an alarm call.  It is not the tune of the call (the book is longer than it needs to be), but it is the act of calling that is so significant (it wakes you up!)

(lostartpress.com)

Design prior to the Industrial Revolution was a very different process.  Before the age of machines, artisans very seldom measured anything: no technical drawings, only the crudest of rulers.  Instead, artisans dealt in geometry.  It did not matter how tall a column was, but that its height was five times that of the pedestal.  Design was not about precision, but proportion.  And everything was in proportion--from the smallest detail to the largest dimension.  These ratios were based on some fundamental "unit," an element of the piece upon which all other parts were related (in the case of a column, the pedestal).  The authors describe how, with a divider in hand, they explored various designs (furniture, architectural elements, etc...) and found all of these fantastic whole-number proportions: halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, eights.  Once you unlock the piece, that is find the unit, this sort of "frozen music" emerges, a symphony in form: "octave, fifth, fourth, fifth, octave."

The key tool in this type of design was the divider, with which you could step out these ratios.  And if you were going to reproduce a design, you just needed to know the "musical score," as there were no measured drawings: the width of the drawer is five times its height, the casing of the window is 1/6 the width, etc...  The height of this form of design was the "Classical Orders," and studying them was a crucial way that artisans educated themselves.  A bit like practicing the musical scales, drawing and redrawing Ionic columns and the like woke one's eye to these relationships and trained artisans in proper proportions.

Why did all of this end?  As the Industrial Revolution erupted, machines took over production from artisans.  Rather than tools being an extension of the maker, the maker became an extension of the machine.  And machines don't deal in ratios; they need cold numbers.  And so, measurement overtook proportions as the currency of design, and the "frozen music" of pre-industrial design was largely lost from made objects.

(desertwindgraphics.com)

One interesting legacy of this age of designing "by hand and eye" had to do with counting on one's fingers.  Pre-industrial designers did not like counting by tens as we do today.  For adding and subtracting, tens are very logical, but for ratios, tens are very limiting.  You can only break them down into 1/2 and 1/5th.  Instead, designers preferred to count in twelves, which break down into all sorts of great ratios: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6.  And so they learned to count to twelve on their fingers!  Using their thumb as a pointer, they would count the digits on the remaining four fingers, creating ratios of twelve.  I had always wondered why the imperial system was based on twelve inches.  Such an odd way to measure things (but a great way to create ratios!)

This has gotten me thinking about spoon design.  What are the proportions that work best for eating spoons?  What is the unit of measurement?  For a while I messed around with length as the unit, with each part of the spoon taking up one third of the total: bowl, stem, handle.  How long should an eating spoon be?  Taking a cue from Walker and Tolpin, I used a body measurement: the span of my hand.  (By the way, the metal soup spoons in my kitchen are about the span of a hand.)  This worked OK, but really the crucial measurement of an eating spoon is not its length.  It is the width of the bowl.  If you are going to put the spoon in your mouth, it can only be so wide (I realize some eating spoons are made for "sipping" and are not supposed to fit in the mouth).  Once you determine the ideal bowl width, all other elements of the spoon grow in proportion to that.  You scale it down for the details, and scale it up for the overall dimensions.

I will add some drawings I have made when I can get near a scanner...  More to come.

Notes on eating spoon design

I have been studying eating spoon design these days, trying to figure out what feels right to me.  Here are some of my notes:

• How much should the bowl rise in relation to the handle?  About 15 degrees, so it comes up to meet the mouth.  
• How long should the bowl be in relation to its width?  About 1.6 to 1.  
• How long should the spoon be in relation to the length of the bowl?  About 3 to 1, though this can vary significantly.  
• How about handle shape?  I like the tail of the handle to thicken and kick up a bit at the end, giving the hand something to grasp onto.  I also like a little concavity in the top of the handle where the thumb can register.  
• As to the bottom of the handle, the transition of the the keel of the stem to the underside of the handle should have a little flat surface to provide the middle finger a place to rest, otherwise the spoon feels a little unstable.  
• The plan view of the handle can vary significantly, though lots of decorative bulges and points don't always work so well in the hand.  I like a little bulge near where the index finger wraps around the side, giving it a nice purchase on the spoon.

So, what does this look like?  Not sure yet, but here are a few recent cherry spoons that I am liking:

The overall length to bowl length ratio on this one is a little under 3 to 1

This one kicks up ever so slightly in the tail.

Here my index finger has a bulge to wrap around.  Feels good!

Here my middle finger has a flat to rest on.

This spoon is longer than the above spoon, ratio now over 3 to 1.  It is nice for deeper bowls.  Reaches right in there!

This one has a great swell at the tail.  Feels very secure!

My index finger rests comfortably on that bulge.

I rounded the keel on this one a bit, so my index does not quite know where to sit...
It is OK, but not as nice as the first spoon.

Study, fail, replicate

Barn Carder once inscribed "I believe in replication" in one of his spoons.   Like writing drafts of prose, replicating a spoon must help you pare away the superfluous, reveal weaknesses, and distill the full idea.
But honestly I wouldn't know--because I can't seem to find the time for replication.
I finish a spoon every week or two, from time carved out of my busy life.  Regretfully, I can't seem to take a weekend and just make a mess of spoons.  I know it would really help my carving, but work and family beckon.  Also, I definitely feel that my taste in spoons is still evolving.  I am still coming to terms with what makes a great spoon, and I rather not copy junk.
And so, in my case I have found that there is a step or two before replication:

• Study: I have tried to carve a lot of different types of spoons--different bowl designs, different handle lengths, different angles.  It has been really nice to sit down with a wide variety of spoons and see what I like about each.  It has helped me inch towards a vision of a "good" spoon.  That, and studying spoons from master carvers.  I have a few spoons from the likes of Jarrod Stone Dahl, Don Nalezyty, and Oliver Pratt.  They have given me new ideas for how far I can push the material, what bowl shapes work, and how the handle interacts with the hand.  I don't love everything about all of them, but they give me great ideas.  I guess through study I am developing my taste.  Once I feel firm on that, maybe I will feel better about replication.

• Failure: The other day my daughter asked for a bowl of ice cream, and while prying out a rock-hard chunk, my spoon split.  My daughter was horrified.  She literally moaned, "oh daddy, Oh Daddy, OH DADDY!"  My wife was cross and snapped, "Why didn't you use a metal scoop?!"  Me, I just shrugged and reached for another wooden spoon.  Yes the spoon represented a few hours work, but its failure brought me great insight.  I now see how the bowl was too thin for its short, straight grain.  With radially split blanks I need different thicknesses in different places than with bent crook spoons.  Seems obvious, and I understood it intellectually, but nothing like a splintery mess to drive the point home.

I recently received a spoon from Steve Tomlin.  It too was made from radially split wood.  It works perfectly and feels very comfortable in the hand and mouth.  The finish is top notch, with subtle details that belie its apparent simplicity.  And yet, my first reaction was that it felt a bit too chunky.  Too much material in the bowl and the handle, I thought...  Until now.  

Study, fail, replicate.

Some wisdom for beginners, quoted by Steve Tomlin

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit." ~ Ira Glass

For more, see http://kottke.org/11/04/your-taste-is-why-your-own-work-disappoints-you