A Cabinetmaker's Sketchbook Pt. 1

A Cabinetmaker’s sketchbook using

freehand mechanical drawing.

Part 1

I am One that Transforms into Two.
I am Two that transforms into Four.
I am Four that transforms into Eight.
After This, I am One again.

EGYPTIAN CREATION MYTH

            A sketch book is one of the cabinetmaker’s most important tools. Drawing allows him to work on ideas and by keeping a book he can go back to see how his work is evolving, but at some time he is going to need to produce measured scale drawings in that book or full size drawings for the layout of a finished piece. Another area of study is that of proportion; how does one part of a design relate to the whole. All designers have faced that problem since the time of the Egyptians.

            Before the middle of the 19^th Century measuring tools were crude to say the least. When I was first getting started, back in the 1970s, the old guys still said use only one tape for a job, that way the measurements will all add up. But in the actual old days there were no universally standardized measures. The divider, straight edge and plumb bob were the tools of layout, no matter how large the job was. Yet the work of the last 5000 years puts us in the shade as far as the search for beauty is concerned. So how can we restore these methods and use them in our contemporary world.

            “Of the Arts which are either improved or ornamented by Architecture, that of   Cabinet-making is not only the most useful and ornamental, but capable of receiving as great assistance from it as any whatever. I have therefore prefixed to the following designs a short explanation of the Five Orders. Without an acquaintance with this Science and some knowledge of the rules of Perspective, the Cabinet-Maker cannot make the designs of his work intelligible, nor show, in a little compass, the whole conduct and effect of the Piece. These, therefore, ought to be carefully studied by everyone who would excel in this branch, since they are the very Soul and Basis of his Art”

                                                                                                Thomas Chippendale – 1762

            What did Master Chippendale mean by this, the first paragraph of the preface to his “Gentleman & Cabinet-Makers Director”? Why did he devote five pages to detailed drawings of the orders with another two pages of drawings of the geometry of the column base moldings, and the moldings of the pedestals?  Did he want his fellow workmen to adopt the Classical Orders and apply them directly to their work? Probably not, or at least not in their entirety, as few of the ensuing designs can demonstrate this, maybe he was suggesting something deeper, an actual Science of Design.

One of the advantages to living in New York City, beside the many furniture collections, is the educational institutions. I’ve taken classes at one of these, The Institute of Classical Architecture. Through a study of the Classical Orders, constructive geometry, and proportion I feel I have been introduced to that Science Master Chippendale spoke of.

In Fifteenth century Italy many ideas came together to produce the movement we now call The Renaissance. This was a time when the final collapse of Constantinople before the forces of Islam meant that the wisdom of Classical Greece was being translated from Greek into Latin. There followed the growth of a new humanism where Man became the measure of truth and beauty. One of the strands of those ideas and the one most pertinent to Architecture was the rediscovery of the Ten Books of Architecture by Vitruvius. Although this set of volumes had first come to light in about 1000 A.D., the return of the Pope to Rome and the rebuilding of the Holy City, not to mention the growth of world trade and the growing power of a commercial/military aristocracy, led to a desire to understand the design rules of the existing ruins of the long dead empire. The Ten Books contain the work and research of this first century architect and his compilation of writings on the subject going back to the Hellenistic period, all of those older volumes having been lost. In his books he presents the concepts of Ordinatio and Symmetria as methods of finding numerical ratios so that the parts of a project will have proportional relations to each other no matter how large or small. He presented these families of design by the names that have come down to us. In the later translations Ordinatio became The Orders of Architecture. As these architects and scholars began to measure these ruins they found that what Vitruvius had written was true, that the proportions and details were not random but were the result of numerical, harmonic and geometric relationships. Below is a comparison of the orders and their grosser numerical proportions.

We can see that this is the most basic method of construction, the post, or column, and the beam, or entablature. The numbers show the proportional relations within the order with one, or Unity, being the width of the column shaft at its base. Therefore whatever the size of the order it will always exhibit the same proportions, whether used to define the decoration of a room or the front of a sky scraper from the 1920’s, but is there a way to use this idea in something as small as a furniture piece?

            Start with a sketch pad, 18” x 24” spiral bound with a heavy weight paper, 80 lbs. and smooth as the absence of tooth is very important. Also pick up a newsprint pad of the same size as backing sheets will also be important. The straight edge can be a 24” steel rule or a T-square with the head removed or used upside down. At least two compasses are necessary, one to hold a fixed dimension and another to move between other dimensions as required. A small awl, ground to a fine point, pencils and leads at a hardness of HB, a draftsman’s dry cleaning pad, a sandpaper pad to keep the leads sharp, a kneaded eraser, a pink or green eraser, and an eraser shield completes the basic tool kit.

           Start the drawing by placing six to eight sheets of newsprint under the drawing sheet and with the awl pierce the sheet in the center, this piercing will be designated point Z. Set the compass at a comfortable radius, say five inches, draw a circle centered at Z.

 Using the straight edge drop the vertical diameter of the circle making sure the point of the pencil passes through the piercing at Z.

These, and subsequent piercings, will make plain the points where lines meet or cross as a slight misstep in the placement of these points will add up as the drawing proceeds, defeating the search for accuracy. Where the diameter intersects the circle label these points A and B, and pierce them with the awl.

Using the radius step off from points A & B what would be the vertices of a hexagon around the circumference of the circle. Using points A and B as the vertexes of opposing angles draw lines connecting these points to the opposing vertices. It is not necessary to pierce the ends of the legs of these angles.

At the points where the two angles converge a horizontal diameter can be projected, pierce these points and project the line to strike the circle at points C and D, pierce these points.

We now have two diameters AZB, and CZD, four circles can now be drawn centered at A,B, C, and D.

Where the circles converge we will get points E, F, G, and H, as the corners of our square.

If the square is true drawing the sides of the square will cause the pencil to move through the previously pierced points on the circumference of the unity circle. This is the full construction.

The Unity Square can then be subjected to a variety of cuts and expansions that can give us many different sets of nested rectangles. These cuts can also be used together to give finer divisions, and therefore dimensions, as the design process progresses.

At this point some may be asking what is the point of all this since the drawing process has been reduced by so many CAD programs, both 2D and 3D, to button pushing and toolset manipulation. Hell, they’re demonstrating “Black Box” woodworking at the WMIA convention, feed in a set of Auto Cad drawings at one end and a set of parts pops out at the other, ready for robot assembly.

The point of these exercises is to slow down, engage in the physical process of drawing as part of the physical process of making, gaining a “feel” for the developing proportional relationships, and to also never lose sight of the piece by becoming buried in the zoom tools’ ability to make fine details more important than they really are. As the Greeks might say, we are saying a prayer to Hephaestus the god of craftsmen.

At this point I would like to end this post. In a future one I’ll go into the cuts and expansions of the Unity Square and the proportional relationships they give. Again I would like to thank the teachers who introduced me to this work at the ICA-CA, Richard Cameron and Steve Bass in Constructive Geometry, and Martin Brandwein in the study of The Orders. For those who want to find out more about the Orders and the other aspects of Classical Architecture these books are recommended:

The American Vignola by William Ware

The Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio

A Treatise on the Decorative Parts of Civil Architecture by William Chambers.

Vitruvius on Architecture by Thomas Gordon Smith

The Elements of Classical Architecture by Georges Gromort

Classical Architecture by Robert Adam.

http://decorativearts.library.wisc.edu/images.html is a place to train the eye.

Many think that the study of Classical Architecture is unnecessary to the study of proportion in cabinetmaking, this is erroneous. The questions we ask now have all been answered centuries ago, though transferring them from building to bookcase may not be so obvious at first. The other problem is the war that has been going on in the Arts since the birth of Modernism. For most of the Twentieth Century the Arts have been involved in throwing over not only the work of the last 500 years but the work of the last 5000. Personally, I don’t think we’re that smart. But I’ll grind those political and aesthetic axes at another time.

So Above,

So Below.

JimG33