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Federal Furniture: Impact and Relevance Today. Season 2, Episode 17.
43 Plays3 years ago
What did furniture makers during the Federal period do that we still do today? This week we discuss Federal period veneering and inlay.
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Transcript
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American Craftsman Podcast Overview
00:01:08
Speaker
All right, people, welcome to the American Craftsman podcast. Yeah. Episode 17. 17 of the new year already. Yeah. What is this? This is what, the third episode of New Year? Yeah, I should say a new season. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we don't really start on the first of January. Yeah, I think August was the beginning.
00:01:34
Speaker
Wow, all the way back again. Yeah.
Technical Changes in the Podcast
00:01:37
Speaker
Yeah, this is our first week. We're going, no more video. Just become too much of a problem. We decided we have faces for radio. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, you know, software problems and.
00:01:56
Speaker
Frankly, a lot of you guys, I mean, the vast majority of people just listen, so. Yeah. We actually, we got some new microphones. I think it sounds a little bit different. I mean, you just heard what was reported. Yeah. It definitely sounds a little bit different than, I wouldn't say it's any better or worse, but definitely just a little bit different.
00:02:14
Speaker
What are we using now? We got some Shure's. These are, yeah, Shure MV7s, which is like a kind of like a cheaper dumbed down version of the SM7B.
00:02:26
Speaker
Yeah, which is sort of like the mic for this kind of stuff. Yeah.
Federal Period Furniture Overview
00:02:32
Speaker
So we're still figuring some stuff out with that. And yeah, well, we won't bore you with any of this microphone talk anymore, but that's exciting stuff. I don't know. Yeah. We're so we're getting back into the federal period. Well, I mean, you got it's no different for you. We've been away from the podcast for three or four weeks or whatever. Yeah. We recorded the last batch about a month ago.
00:02:56
Speaker
So we're revisiting this last episode. We didn't get time to fit it in the last time because we ran into those issues with the, again, with the filming. Right. So we had to cut that day short. So we're gonna get this one done today and then we'll be moving on to what's the next- I think Empire. Yeah. So we're gonna sort of, I think what we're gonna be doing is a little bit of a wrap up, you know, sort of summarizing
00:03:25
Speaker
the federal period, and we're going to talk about how it's relevant today, its impact. You know, all this stuff is sort of, by the time you get to where we are as craftsmen, as a society and everything, everything's all just muddled together nowadays.
00:03:46
Speaker
It's interesting to even think about how there were these distinct periods of style because I can't really even think of the last time we had anything like that. Yeah, something that's like a very clear cut. And new. Right. And I mean, you see these styles are
00:04:10
Speaker
encompassing decades upon decades. So maybe we're in the middle one now. We just don't know it. It could be. We're in the middle of a lot of stuff we don't know. The other thing that's interesting and it's going to be true when we get into empire as well is that
00:04:33
Speaker
It's weird to think about how these larger social issues have influenced the style of the day. This is called federal because it's named after the United States becoming the United States. No longer a colonial entity of Britain.
00:04:58
Speaker
So as I said, federal references this period after the Revolutionary War. It's not necessarily one super specific style of furniture, although there are definite, what would you call it, characteristics of federal furniture that we can all kind of recognize, those straight lines.
00:05:21
Speaker
definitely a move away from the the florid sort of carvings and you know we if we can reach back in our memory thinking about like you know Chippendale and when all those things those curved legs the Cabrio and all that came in to be
00:05:41
Speaker
but definitely still pretty ornate. Oh, yeah. I mean, there definitely is still a lot of turned legs and intricate veneer work, stuff like that. Yeah, we're gonna, I have a couple of links.
00:05:55
Speaker
Um, well, we'll talk because no, I mean, nobody saw him anyway. Here's the thing. Now, if you want to see the pictures, you got to join the Patreon because that's the only way you're going to get these links. Yeah. Yeah. That's not it. We're not extorting you. It's just the reality of it. Now, since there's no video, if you want to see the pictures, uh, the, the links will be in the outline that the, uh, Patreon, the patrons get over. Right. Right. You can get the whole, it's almost like a study guide actually.
00:06:24
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And there's more information in this than we even cover really. Yeah. Because we end up skipping over parts. Glossing over some things. Yeah. So.
00:06:37
Speaker
let me backtrack a little bit federal period named after the time after the Revolutionary War. And the styles even varied from town to town. That's how not pinned down it was.
00:06:56
Speaker
I should say that it wasn't called the federal period in Europe. It was just called furniture. No, they called it neoclassicism. Because a lot of this stuff is people looking backwards, the classics. We talked about it maybe in the first episode, the unearthing of Pompeii.
00:07:21
Speaker
found all these things that were sort of frozen in time and they're like holy crap this school let's start you know exactly making what they were doing in in Italy back you know whatever thousand years ago. Yeah it was it was pretty cool. So
00:07:38
Speaker
You know, if you've ever seen Antiques Roadshow, like there's the the Kino Brothers and stuff like that, guys like that, they can, because all this stuff wasn't signed, they can identify what area, what town or city sometimes these pieces were made and sometimes by whom.
00:07:59
Speaker
And, you know, they all have similarities, but each craftsman kind of had, and each town had their own thing. So it was sort of like, you know, if we were working back then, we'd be working in a specific style, and people would, you know, say, oh, that's a New Jersey. That could be Green Street, because, you know, they were working at a Port Mamas New Jersey. And they're like, oh, look, it's like a one, you know, an eighth-inch chamfer.
00:08:32
Speaker
That's something that they did a lot. Yes, there's the Luigi. So federal period furniture is still available today. I mean, if you type in federal period furniture, just in a Google search,
00:08:49
Speaker
you'll see shops that dedicate themselves to it. But mostly it's like you type in federal period furniture and you get like Wayfair and Rainwater and Flanagan. But they're still sort of copying the general look of the furniture.
Influences on Federal Style
00:09:10
Speaker
It's so it's popular it's it's somewhat timeless if you're into that style of furniture you know that kind of it's for today's look it's very formal. Let's see.
00:09:30
Speaker
i got here the publication of hepple whites the cabinet maker in a pollsters guide pablo pub published uh... what's gonna be one of those days is this posthumously published posthumously by his wife alice in seventeen eighty eight and thomas sheraton's four volumes of the cabinet makers and a pollster is drawing book had a huge impact on the spread and dissemination of the federal style
00:09:55
Speaker
with hepplewhite having over six hundred subscribers himself it's safe to say the plans and ideas from those books were used by thousands of cabinet makers including other well-known builders like duncan fife and the seam wars this is a jog in my memory that those guys were big in this period yeah
00:10:16
Speaker
It's funny to think that, well, you know, there weren't the Raymore and Flanagan's and Wayfarers of the day. So if you wanted a piece of furniture, you had to go to a shop, basically. And whatever was popular, that was what people wanted. They'd come to you and say, yeah, build us a dresser. And it's got to be in the style of the day.
00:10:45
Speaker
Yeah, because that's what everybody's making. Right. So we would bust open the book, and we'd say, which one do you want? Pop open SketchUp.
00:11:00
Speaker
It's so foreign to us because we kind of go from our gut, you know what I mean? We're trying to, you know, of course we draw on our own influences, but we're trying to challenge ourselves and things like that without being too avant-garde about it. So no, American neoclassicism, federal style, and the founding fathers.
00:11:28
Speaker
So if anybody's a history nerd like me, you'll know that Thomas Jefferson spent a bunch of time in Paris. Did he? Yeah. You know Jefferson. Wasn't there a movie, Jefferson in Paris, something like that?
00:11:44
Speaker
Anyway, he was sort of like, we'll call him the American apostle of classicism. And he came to Philly, he came back to Philly in 1790, and he brought with him 86 cases of neoclassical furnishings straight from Paris. So, although this is called the federal period,
00:12:08
Speaker
And America thought we were forging our own identity. We're still heavily influenced by the styles driven by European designers and makers. James Madison, another of our founding fathers, he ordered French furnishings. Monroe, these are all signers of the Declaration of Independence. Even Washington himself
00:12:38
Speaker
He had acquired a lot of furniture from Paris. They should have been buying local. Just saying. Shop local. Yeah. Seems like politicians haven't changed much. No. If you check out these links, the appear table. Wow.
00:13:00
Speaker
It's pretty ornate, as you were saying. Hey, what the hell's going on here? You could see the animal feet, the carvings. And this is not necessarily what you'd think straight federal period, but this definitely fits into that category. Yeah.
00:13:23
Speaker
You can see in the back, almost, it's that tapered column.
00:13:33
Speaker
a mirror right here. Yeah. Yeah. Like looking at this leg. I'm like what's up with this leg. Yeah. The appear table was sort of set against the wall. Yeah. Like I could see it like in the foyer you know. And a lot of times they'd have like draperies and stuff like that. It'd be like in between windows and things like that. You know how they had those huge windows.
00:13:59
Speaker
And a lot of times they put a big mirror mounted over the top of it too. Seen a lot of stone tops in the federal period. Yeah, yeah. But look at all that inlay. And probably a lot of that's, you know, gold leafing and stuff like that. I don't know.
00:14:23
Speaker
Oh,
Veneer Work in Federal Furniture
00:14:24
Speaker
look at all that hand carving. We were just talking about how there was less carving. I mean, this is heavily carved. Look at that. Yeah. Look at this claw foot. Yeah. It's like, you know, a more photorealistic kind of.
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, what we've learned through, um, doing these podcasts is that it wasn't like one guy built this piece of furniture. Um, this would come out of a shop that had a guy who specialized in carving and he'd do all the carving work. One guy might specialize in the inlay and that sort of thing where we're sort of do it all guys nowadays.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah. You know, the custom cabinet shop. Let's see the other one. This is typically rectangular. It's a little bit more. Very Eastern looking. Yeah. Shape wise, what we think of as federal. But those inlays and that center panel, that's really unusual. Wow.
00:15:38
Speaker
It's pretty cool. Well, you could see there's, you know, influence from the wider world there. But even that, even the door or whatever that, I think that's a drop-down leaf. That's a secretaire. Oh, yeah, it looks like it. So that probably drops down. It looks like those are all veneers. Yeah. Could the sapwood here? Mm-hmm. So it was a lot of veneer work.
00:16:09
Speaker
uh... as we've been saying it's pretty impressive uh... it's it's it's a shame you know most people listening uh... but uh...
00:16:28
Speaker
and I don't know if people even have the time in their busy schedules but these pieces of furniture are really worth seeing. I mean it's been eye-opening for us to just take a look at the level of craftsmanship that these are not necessarily all like famous pieces because of who made them, they're just surviving pieces. Right, yeah there's only so many examples of genuine
00:16:57
Speaker
So it's like, there were so many skilled crafts, man, it's unbelievable. Whereas nowadays, they're few and far between. This almost looks like liturgical. Like a tabernacle or something. Yeah, yeah, I could see that. Talk about rectilinear. Right.
00:17:24
Speaker
uh... so that's a good segue into uh... talking about veneer and inlay which is it's one of the defining features of the federal era uh... and uh... although that you know they had done it before obviously but this becomes like uh... a really prominent feature during this period of furniture uh... and for you us nowadays
00:17:51
Speaker
Veneer has kind of taken on almost a lesser than kind of meeting. Right. You know. Now it's like a cheap way out versus and that we're generalizing obviously. Yes. Versus like something to be done to elevate the craft. It's something to be done to save money basically.
00:18:14
Speaker
Right I mean because it's even like a part of speech like to say it's like you know a thin veneer you know or the veneer over something it kind of means you know the gloss over it cover up something but here we got I noted four reasons for good reasons for employing veneer
00:18:40
Speaker
uh... one more balance construction can be achieved free from the inevitable splitting checking warping and distortion of solid timber
00:18:54
Speaker
Yeah, we know about that. Yes. Two, or B, the availability of rare and highly decorative timbers is vastly extended by using them in sheet form. So it's economical. It's ecologically... You could stretch out that tree.
00:19:15
Speaker
uh... next for decorative effect duplication of identical grain configurations can make match panels and all sorts of patterns uh... and that's really hard to deal with you know or in a sense impossible to do with solid wood you know unless you got a flitch and then even then by the time you got to third or fourth board you know you
00:19:42
Speaker
You start to lose the green. It's not going to look the same.
00:19:47
Speaker
And last, certain rare and costly burrs, curls, abnormal grain effects have very little structural strength. So you can use like a burl. And we don't have to worry about whether it's going to be strong enough to be in a door or something like that. Yeah, you could use limb wood probably. You know, you can't use that in furniture. No, it'll move like crazy.
00:20:14
Speaker
I think that's something that a lot of people don't know is that all the wood that you would buy, like all the wood we get, that's all from the trunk. Yes. It's never from a limb. Yeah. Because the limb is way more prone to movement and they're just not structurally sound. I'm getting emails. We get low ball offers on our old microphones. We don't take kindly to that. No.
00:20:42
Speaker
Yeah, if anybody's, anybody out there listening, you know, is looking for a couple of good mics. Audio Technica AT2020 XLR with accessories.
00:20:54
Speaker
Yeah. And there are disadvantages to using veneers. The ones that we could commonly think of, like the chipping, the fragility of the edges, and even on a top surface.
00:21:17
Speaker
Back in the day, the glues would sort of seep through and you wouldn't be able to get that same kind of sheen that they really liked back then. But it's not so much of a problem today.
00:21:36
Speaker
And if anybody's interested, I pulled some of this information from the Encyclopedia Furniture Making by Ernest Joyce, to quote my reference. Is that a movie Ernest does furniture making? Yeah, but it doesn't come out that well.
00:22:02
Speaker
We watched Earnest Saves Christmas with Hunter. Oh, did you? Yeah, how do you like it? Yeah, he's only three and a half, so he was in just pretty quick no matter what it is, but that was funny. I hadn't seen him in a long time. I think Earnest came out. I was probably still in school. I might have been in college. And if I'm correct in this, now I went to Arizona State University
00:22:31
Speaker
in 1981, 82. And I think the guy who plays Ernest, I think he was in a local commercial in Phoenix.
00:22:47
Speaker
you know like whatever their channel five is and that's how he got his start like he was this goofy guy and like a either like a used car place or something like that and he parlayed it into this goofy character in the movies trying to see if I can find a 1984 KPHO earnest
00:23:13
Speaker
KPHL, there you go Phoenix. Christmas sports promotion commercial.
00:23:35
Speaker
There you go. See the old memory? Every now and then it kicks in. Oh, man. That seemed like maybe it was... Oh, come on now. Might have been after he had done one. Yeah, that looks like maybe he was already kind of known at that point, but... Right. Anybody use YouTube on their phone and you put it in full screen and then it gets, like, locked sideways? Super annoying. Yeah. Yeah, let's see if we can find it. That's a little... That's something worth knowing.
00:24:04
Speaker
We'll look for that on the Patreon. And we'll find it because everything's on the Internet. That's right. So one thing I thought of and found interesting was had they make veneers back in the day and you know. I was wondering that.
00:24:23
Speaker
well you know everything came from the sawyers and originally you had two guys on one on either end of a saw and it this is unbelievable to me that you know that the best guys could produce two or three sheets
00:24:42
Speaker
per centimeter which was is about an eighth of an inch thick well you know not the centimeter right you know the sheets they could they could create like an eighth inch thick sheet of veneer now centimeters what I think it's what it came out to I had a look it up 2.54 centimeters to the inch no well maybe yeah I don't know maybe my math was incorrect I put centimeter inch
00:25:11
Speaker
And how much is a centimeter to the inch? Let's see what you get. How many centimeters in an inch? Yeah, 2.54. So that would be 1 divided by 2.54, right? 0.39. OK, 0.37.
00:25:35
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's what that's how I came up with the eighth inch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like three eighths of an inch. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Minus the thickness of the blade, I guess. Yeah. Imagine that. Well, I can't because you're not just cutting like a little piece, you're cutting a sheet. Well, you know, not like I mean, some pieces are big. Yeah.
00:26:06
Speaker
So from 1730 to 1830, roughly, veneers were the work of the sawyer. And if you were a veneer cutter, that meant you were like top dog. That was the pinnacle of being a sawyer.
00:26:25
Speaker
I don't know what kind of blade they were using or on what size pieces, but some of them could get five or six slices of veneer per inch. Jeez. That's pretty good.
00:26:44
Speaker
uh... so as may be supposed when they came into the hands of the cabinet maker they were very rough in a regular those are the veneer pieces we're talking about and uh... to get over which the smoothing plane and to the plane were freely and energetically used
00:27:03
Speaker
at the beginning of the day. I love the way people used to write and speak. Sometimes I'll read my notes directly, sometimes I'll paraphrase.
00:27:17
Speaker
it's great because you know uh... folks used to write with uh... just a different flare uh... the smoothing plane in the tooling plane were freely and energetically
00:27:38
Speaker
Yeah, that was written in 1881 back when they still had a little bit of style in their writing. The furniture gazette. Yeah. By the 19th century, so we're still talking the 1800s, special circular saws were available to cut as many as six sheets to the centimeter. Oh my God. That's crazy.
00:28:00
Speaker
all but for the most difficult timbers. This technique is now conducted by a less wasteful knife cutting methods. I don't see even see how that's possible to get six out of a centimeter. Right. I don't either. How thin is that blade. Exactly. And it may be less like a tooth blade and more like a knife blade but
00:28:22
Speaker
the machines I saw that were doing like I saw like the knife cutting machines it was almost like a big hand plane I've seen that yeah the rotary where it the log spins and then contacts the cutter and it cheers on these big sheets yeah yeah
00:28:46
Speaker
Yeah, the rotary cup method, it unpeels the annual rings from the rotating log in a continuous sheet. I guess that's how they're making plywood nowadays, huh? Yeah.
00:28:57
Speaker
Yeah. Well I mean it depends like you know the plywood that we buy when we're buying like you know say say we buy double A or A1 walnut. Usually it's either book match or slip match right. But like your pre-fin and stuff that's all rotary cut. Yeah. Let's check out this veneer tabletop.
00:29:27
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah, that's classic
Design and Function in Federal Furniture
00:29:30
Speaker
federal, isn't it? Yeah. What do they call these tables that fold over like that? I don't know. Is that a candle table? Tea table? All I got is table. It is a table. Yeah, well, to describe it, I mean, you can see there's banding around. It's an oval top. Is it? Is it? Or is that just the angle?
00:29:57
Speaker
I thought maybe it was just the perspective. That could be. Yeah, it's got like a... What would you call this? The words are escaping me. It's like a string, like a binding around the edge that alternates. It almost looks like a piece of braided rope
00:30:25
Speaker
Yeah, I think you were on to a strand kind of deal. I think they call that a string inlay, maybe. Check out the center. Hey, an eagle. Yeah, that was big during the federal period. Yeah. There's a fun feat on these curved legs. Yeah, yeah.
00:30:52
Speaker
I mean, it's got some swooping curves on the legs, simple turn, center column. And what would you call those that fanned out, those fanned out stripes? There must be a name for that. Like a sunburst, no? Yeah, there you go. And alternating veneers from the center. Then there's that eagle, which
00:31:19
Speaker
I better look this up because there's a name for that. Oh, Pottery. Pottery Eagle? Yeah. They're pictorial inlays.
00:31:43
Speaker
known as pottery. I hope that's the way you say it. Patery. P-A-T-E-R-A-E. Pottery sounds good to me.
00:31:58
Speaker
So again, to get back to the explosion and the use of veneers, we're talking about what's going on. Wow, there's up close. Yeah, yeah. So it's like marketry, essentially. Yes. You can see the burned edges. Yep.
00:32:22
Speaker
You know, I don't know how they got, you know, I guess they died to get the red and the blue and the white. Kind of looks like the, the Eagle from like a Sesame Street or whatever. Oh, big bird. No, Muppets. The one that's got like the ball and like the bushy eyebrows. When you look at it up close, when you look at the other one,
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. That's like a really, really good looking eagle. Like zoom into his feet and everything. Yeah. And it's kind of clunky where he's holding the arrows. A dog's foot. Yeah. I mean, obviously it's super small. Uh-huh. But yeah, it's like looking like a piece of driftwood over here. That's supposed to be an olive branch in the dog's foot. And this looks like a bunch of arrows. But then when you look up close, it's just like two fat arrows. Yeah. Yeah.
00:33:19
Speaker
So while we're on and on over some of the aspects of it, it's you could see it. The execution isn't, you know, flawless. I've seen better pottery.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah. So during this time, trade to far off lands, probably South America and the tropics and things like that. We're bringing in exotic woods, cutting them up for use in these veneers. Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah.
00:34:01
Speaker
These are wheels. Wow. This is another table with the top that folds up, I guess, so they could slide against the wall. Yeah. Occasional tables, I'm sure, then. You see some kind of stain here. Yeah.
00:34:22
Speaker
There, too. Might have happened while they were storing it or something, huh? Yeah. I wonder if they did this so that you could show off the top. You know what I mean?
00:34:31
Speaker
Oh, that's not a bad suggestion too. So when you're not using it and people came in, they're like, wow, look at that. Yeah. I mean, which is a big element in, in all these projects. I wish that would come back. You got to distract somebody from like the, uh, the smelly syphilis wig you got on.
00:34:54
Speaker
I want that to come back in vogue where people bought furniture to show off. Yeah. I mean they're showing off pocketbooks and shoes and everything like that and watches. Yeah. Cars. Yeah. I want to see furniture come back as this statement piece. Now it's like look at my you know I got this five million dollar house and we bought the cabinets from Craftmade. Yeah. Boy. Yeah.
00:35:21
Speaker
I know. And, you know, we spent big money. We got the couch from West Elm instead of IKEA. Crate and barrel. Yeah. No, restoration hardware. Yeah, restoration hardware. Instead of being made by slave children, it was made by slave teenagers in Malaysia.
00:35:46
Speaker
So my title for this link was called veneer table top two.
00:35:57
Speaker
Well, it certainly fits the description. Again, it's sort of that fanned out from the center, but they're sort of book match. Are those book match pairs, or is that just the way the flitch laid out? I think this might be the match right here. Yeah.
00:36:22
Speaker
Um, like that, the really dark one looks like it might be a pair. The next one down. Well, I think, yeah, they're book matched here and here. Oh, I see. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's like 16, or now maybe more. Uh, one, two, three, four, five. So what is there, 20 pieces? 20, does that make sense? Yeah.
00:36:52
Speaker
What's a 20 sided shape called? I don't know. A double dodeca. Dodeca gone. And what can we do? Oh, we probably can't zoom in. I wonder what that circular band is. Oh, it looks like Walnut. Yeah. So yeah, there's a seam here and there's a seam here. But then it also looks like maybe there's a seam right there.
00:37:20
Speaker
Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. So this is a segment right there. And then that's another one. There's some tiny little thing in the middle. Yeah. It's made up of a lot of pieces. Yeah. And look at the way they did the, um, the grain on that, the outside band on the table.
00:37:49
Speaker
Like it's all laid out the same way, but it's all like straight green. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
00:38:04
Speaker
I like this base. Yeah, yeah. Some, what are those, acanthus leaves? Big acanthus leaves on the top there? These, yeah. Or a feather, maybe. Yeah. Some gold and those little tiny wheels. Look at that. Yeah, I mean, don't go over a piece of dust with that. I know. Stop. Well, you know, they probably had like three or four servants wheel that thing out. Yeah.
00:38:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty impressive. Looks like it's triangular, too. This goes back this way. Yeah. Is that a circle cut out or something like that there in the middle? Yeah. Yeah, again, it's worth it if you could take the time and, of course, support the podcast, get a look at some of these things, or just do your own research. It's not hard to find this stuff. Yeah, it's 2022. Do your own research.
00:39:02
Speaker
You look up some federal period furniture.
Societal Impact of Federal Furniture
00:39:05
Speaker
Because a lot of this stuff, the best pictures that I'm able to grab usually come from the matte and things like that. They have really high quality photographs that they don't block from being copied and pasted, linking to.
00:39:21
Speaker
Um, cause some of them, you know, there's the easy way around that. You do a little screenshot. You can see what we got with that basin stand. I did make a note for the basin stand with stringing. Yeah. The basin stand. Um,
00:39:39
Speaker
It demonstrates the importance of string inlay. When wrapped around other inlay are used to define edging. Stringing focuses your eye and influences the design. Say this is a more typical. That's a federal looking piece. There are some of those simple turnings.
00:40:00
Speaker
Yeah. Kind of on the bottom there where you might expect to see that those legs go straight down even with edges instead of being turned. I wish I could zoom with the scroll wheel. Yeah, you get used to doing that, don't you? Yeah, like using fusion. Yeah, yeah. But as you mentioned earlier, there's that stone top set in.
00:40:32
Speaker
in here. It's actually recessed a little bit. I guess they put some kind of basin on there, a wash basin? Yeah. Washing your face or something? Yep. There's columns in the inlay. These stripes are real common motif, I guess sort of a little homage to the American flag. I think so.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah, that thing's checking all the boxes for federal and neoclassicism and all that other stuff. There's a ton of different inlays, string inlay, regular veneering work on the drawer face. They play with the direction of the grain, the different wood species. Yeah, I mean, look right here. Oh, wow.
00:41:25
Speaker
whatever you call this. And unlike that curved part of the apron there? Yeah, they have the grain goes at a 45. Yeah, I guess that's almost like a miter, huh? Yeah.
00:41:41
Speaker
Oh yeah I guess it's just a book match veneer but the point they chose was at an angle. Yeah yeah really really nice detail. Now for the most part I'm not looking to have any of this stuff in my house but it's really easy to admire the workmanship. Oh yeah.
00:42:03
Speaker
What's going on on the side of that case? Is that a board? It's probably, I guess. I'm sure it's all over here. Yeah. You got the handle on the side, which is typical. Nice stuff. Yeah. Now, I added this link underneath the potter A2.
00:42:33
Speaker
pottery too. Yeah. There's the link up there is the school of woodwork. It's a pretty nice web page that kind of walks you through making this this piece here. If anybody's interested in picking up some of those skills I'll spell it well I won't spell it I'll just read it out school of woodwork dot com
00:43:03
Speaker
forward slash how to make a federal period fan inlay using veneers and it's a it's a pretty easy step-by-step shows you how to you know calculate all the the because there's all those angles and this and you're fitting it into a circle right
00:43:31
Speaker
And you got your little sand shading. Yeah. So if anybody's interested, it's using a plain iron to cut them. Mm-hmm.
00:43:47
Speaker
This looks like something for the working hands podcast. Make what you fear. I definitely fear that. Wow. It's cool cause she's, you know, it demystifies it a little bit, you know, not that we didn't know kind of what went into it, but, um,
00:44:12
Speaker
I didn't realize that the black was a whole separate piece. I mean, I thought that was somehow one piece, but if you think about it. So there's a lot of work in that little thing. I need to look up how to say this word. Yeah, there you go. Let's see how far off we were. The internet's a beautiful thing.
00:44:49
Speaker
Is there going to be an ad? Nope. Hey, I got no sound coming out of my, uh, it's there, but, uh, let's see what we got. That's cause I haven't muted. What's going on here?
00:45:15
Speaker
Patarai or E. What? Patarai. Patarai or E. So does she mean Pat? Patarai or E. Patarai or E? Patarai or E. EmmaSaying.com. Emma, listen, do a better job.
00:45:44
Speaker
That's the worst how to say video I've ever seen. Can you put a pause in there, if that's what? Yeah, or I'd say Patry or Patry. We're here to help you get ready for your big day. Sorry for the men's warehouse, Ed. He was one plural. It's the same person. Here we go. Patry.
00:46:14
Speaker
Padre. Padre. Why do they have to do it with a robot voice? It seems like a total cop out. So there you go. How to make a federal period fan Padre. Or Padre. Oh man.
The Story of the Resolute Desk
00:46:41
Speaker
Here's the Duncan 5 tool chest. Yeah, it's that same tiny picture. I know. Believe me, I tried like crazy to find a really good picture because that's a, you know, it's a famous... Yeah, you can go see it as far as I know. I think Freddie was saying that he's seen it in person. Yeah, I wonder how much it weighs. I think we've gone over this, but it has about 300 tools in it.
00:47:11
Speaker
for carving, veneering, inlaying. It's got 60 planes, chisels, gouges. 60 planes, my God. Only woodpeckers. Could you imagine the work that they would have done if they had woodpeckers? Yeah, I mean, Duncan Fife was a slouch compared to those woodpeckers. Yeah. I add here that the Duncan Fife tool chest has inspired countless interpretations.
00:47:44
Speaker
boy you see if you uh... if you got the uh... transcripts you have i've included link to the duncan five tool chest drawing you can make your own duncan five tool chest using real drawings well
00:48:07
Speaker
Good luck with that venture. Is that what you're saying? So what about some examples of federal period architecture and design? Check it out. The Resolute Desk. Yeah, the Resolute Desk was actually, after I had done this research, this was a question on Jeopardy. Yeah, I remember you telling me that. And man, I felt smart.
00:48:35
Speaker
so i'll tell everybody the story of the resolute desk uh... it's also known as the haze desk because uh... is rather for the haze was the president when this thing was gifted uh... so it's a partner's desk uh... it's been used by several presidents it's in the oval office uh... and it was a gift from queen victoria to president rather for the haze in eighteen eighty and was built from the oak timbers
00:49:04
Speaker
of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute. So it's called the Resolute Desk. The desk weighs, guess how much? Well, I'm looking at it. I'm looking at it right there in front of me. I can't guess. 1,300 pounds. HMS Her Majesty's ship? I don't know. I'm guessing ship. Yeah, so the whole desk weighs 1,300 pounds.
00:49:33
Speaker
And it was created by William Evenden. And they say probably from a design by Morant Boyd and Blanford. What happened was the queen ran a contest. Huh. Yeah. So the story of the Resolute is that it was abandoned in the Arctic Waterway. And I can't say the name of this waterway. It's Mary Eunwok.
00:50:03
Speaker
Yeah, probably a Native American name, it looks like. Yeah, well, we're Native or artician. Yeah, artician.
00:50:15
Speaker
I don't know what you call people who live in Arctic. Eskimos? There you go. Yeah, they're still native up there. They're just not American. No. So this polar explorer, this ship, the Resolute, was abandoned in 1854 while was searching for another lost expedition. Jeez. And it was found in 1855.
00:50:44
Speaker
uh... the next year floating in the davis strait by an american whaling ship so uh... they'd they bring it back uh... and they repair it they mean the americans we repair it and we return it to the united kingdom as a gesture of goodwill uh... we know we can't you ask about uh... eight years ago but here's your boat back uh... here's your boat back dot trying to lose your stuff in our territory
00:51:15
Speaker
So what they did was they decommissioned the boat about 25 years later. So they actually used it for a little while. They broke it up and held the aforementioned competition to design and build a piece of furniture from its timbers.
00:51:33
Speaker
that uh... the queen could give to the american president uh... it's a pretty impressive piece of furniture uh... i want to know why have only the last five presidents have used it yeah they they don't all use it i mean it's available to them but uh... they kept it in storage you know that should be like uh... that's the desk
00:51:56
Speaker
I'm right. No choice. That's what I thought, too. I mean, if you look at it, it's got the presidential or the American seal. Now, there's a well-executed eagle with the olive branch and the arrows. Yeah. See, this picture, the focus is on the president. Oh, on the president.
00:52:26
Speaker
This is the only thing I don't like is this little detail right here. It's kind of like a shoe molding. It looks like it was kind of added on, doesn't it? Yeah. I wonder if that was added on to raise the height of the desk. Could be. Where that's not original.
00:52:49
Speaker
Look at this. It looks like this is a panel. Grain carries through. This is all relief carving. It's insane, isn't it? When you really study it, the amount of work. This base cap has a carved rope at the bottom. Yeah, that looks like it's an added-on riser. Because the color's a little different. It is.
00:53:26
Speaker
It looks darker here and lighter there, but it's all the way around on this one. It might just be optical illusion because it's two different pieces of wood.
00:53:39
Speaker
All right.
Historical Furniture Styles Recap
00:53:41
Speaker
So you want to take a quick trip through the periods that we went through, get up to this federal period? Yeah, we'll give everybody a little refresher and ourselves. Yeah, so we started off with the early American period, 1640 to 1700, roughly.
00:54:02
Speaker
It's the first period where a distinct style begins to appear within furniture pieces in the colonies that went beyond just practicality. Some finials, carvings. You know, you're moving from just the hard scrabble life to, oh, let's make something that looks nice.
00:54:24
Speaker
uh... native words on it most of the stuff made in america is going to be native words until we get to the to mahogany era uh... colonial which for whatever reason i always thought was going to be the first one uh... seventeen hundred the seventeen eighty heavily influenced by pieces from england during this time
00:54:50
Speaker
including William and Mary, Queen Anne, and Chippendale. Although the American versions tended to be much less ornamented, more conservative, oil varnish, paint, the typical finishes, dovetail joinery began to make an appearance, along with mortise and tenon joinery.
00:55:17
Speaker
and mahogany starts to creep its way into the picture here along with elm walnut you know the natives we move to the pennsylvania dutch will work they were surprised appearance in our list of twelve uh... be quite honest now this
00:55:41
Speaker
was marked by a German influence. The Pennsylvania Dutch, as we recall, were actually Germans at Pennsylvania Deutsch. There you go. Really utilitarian stuff compared to what was starting to emerge in the design world. A lot of painted stuff, if I remember correctly. And painted scenes, not just
00:56:12
Speaker
Like they had the birds and the tulips and unicorns and all that crazy stuff. Yeah, yeah.
00:56:19
Speaker
And the other thing I remember was it didn't really be it as it was happening. It wasn't known as a style. Yeah. It was it was in a vacuum for sure. Yeah. This is all because it gets discovered in if I remember the 1920s or so. And it's kind of this. Wow. This stuff is cool folk art. Right. Well you know we could see a lot of this stuff is happening concurrently.
00:56:50
Speaker
And now we get to the federal period.
Samuel McIntyre and Federal Architecture
00:56:55
Speaker
1780, it introduces a variety of ornamental styling such as fluting, inlays of contrasting woods to create shapes and designs, banding with contrasting veneers. There's a graceful elegance, even though it's called federal, there's still heavy French and English influence, a lot of brass hardware,
00:57:23
Speaker
Um, usually shapes found in nature, you know, those leaves and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and Thomas Sheridan.
00:57:34
Speaker
was probably the most important figure in this period because of the success of his book, I'll call it. And he was really the most widely reproduced designer of the early 1800s. He's got a whole period named after him, which is a subset of the federal period. And you know what else starts popping up is upholstery.
00:58:04
Speaker
Yeah, and that kind of started with Chippendale too. Yeah, it's still pretty expensive until we get into the next couple of periods. And for the most part, a lot of this stuff is still for the wealthiest folks.
00:58:26
Speaker
You know, people, people like you and me, we weren't partaking. If we were we were around, you know, as simple farmers or workers, we didn't really have anything like this. There was one guy that I wanted to mention
00:58:52
Speaker
who was an important federal period architect and he was uh... samuel mack entire uh... he designed these homes on chestnut street in uh... salem uh... massachusetts and if you think of like a federal style house
00:59:14
Speaker
he's the dude he's the guy that uh... you know it's like the i don't know if he i i won't say he invented he's the guy that perfected this style to uh... to the point where we recognize it as something like the even the layperson can say all that's a federal style house right uh... i'm surprised i don't have a link here
00:59:43
Speaker
I have a McIntyre side chair. Oh, I know why I brought up McIntyre as well. So I brought up McIntyre because, and I even wrote this in italic so that I would be able to make that segue. See where I said, why mention Samuel McIntyre? You just didn't get far enough into your notes.
01:00:12
Speaker
You had to put it earlier. Why did I bring up Samuel McIntyre? You can see how you spell it. I spell them different every time.
01:00:37
Speaker
In 2011, a mahogany side chair with carving attributed to Samuel McIntyre sold at auction for $662,500, setting a world record for federal furniture. The handmade and hand carved chair made in the late 1790s was one of a set of eight. Oh man, it would have liked to have the other seven. Originally purchased by Elizabeth Crown Shield,
01:01:04
Speaker
and Elias Haskett Derby. Let's take a look at that side chair and see why it's worth 600. Oh, God. Is this a shield back? Yep, there's the shield back. That's a Chippendale, isn't it? Or is it a Sheraton? I can't remember who did the shield back. I thought it was hepa white. Was it hepa white? There you go. But man, is that- This is looking a little Jacobian.
01:01:27
Speaker
Yeah that's really an understated design. Yeah I mean we can't I mean there's definitely some carvings and stuff that we can't see that well but. Well it goes to show you what an important figure McIntyre was because it's not really based on the design of that chair but I did have a couple links to the there you go there's some of McIntyre's work
01:01:56
Speaker
Look at those chimneys. Those are great. Yeah. There you go. It's like when you think of Boston, you know, Battle Hall and all that stuff. Yeah, right. It looked like the four square with the chimney in each corner of the house kind of thing. Um,
01:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, very cool. The shutters on the windows. I mean, one's got these big entablatures over the windows. Yeah, the front. They have the columns. This big pediment.
01:02:40
Speaker
See, if that house was in Staten Island, the columns would go all the way up to the third floor. It'd be about six times the diameter, too. And the house would be stucco. And there'd be lions out front. Statute David.
Legacy of Federal Craftsmanship
01:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's some classic federal architecture. Yeah, I like this house.
01:03:07
Speaker
Yeah, I like the gray. I love that. What do you call those intertwined blocks at the corners? I was trying to think of that. I don't know. The way they tooth in the blocks almost looks like a zipper at the corner. Yeah, they're like railroaded, I guess. But it's a clabbered house. Yes. I mean, obviously, they pick out a couple of really nice examples to take pictures of.
01:03:36
Speaker
I there's something very regal about these big tall chimneys. Yeah, the chimneys extend 15 More yeah, this is a floor right that's they're 20 feet out of the roof they are Yeah, it's it's a really fine-looking home
01:03:58
Speaker
I mean, this is a honking chimney right here. Yeah. That's like eight by eight. That's probably the kitchen back there. Yeah. Um, I mean, look at all the windows. How many windows does that gray building have across the front of it? Wow. Two, three, four, five, 15, 14. That's pretty cool. Yeah.
01:04:24
Speaker
Not like today's homes where like the side of the house will have no windows on it. Just one in the bathroom. Yeah. This double bay window. Yeah, that's pretty nice. You can see like reading a book or something in there, a nice sunny day. Powder in your wig. There's like a little roof here with a side door.
01:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I lived in a house like that. They had one of those porticos on the side. That was really cool. Oh, yeah. I like that. You drive in, and it's a show for a drop show off. Yeah. Wasn't quite that nice, but yeah. In Texas, it lived in a place like that. Nice stuff. Yeah. So that wraps up our- That's the federal period, folks. Yeah. It was pretty interesting.
01:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, getting into some, some cool stuff, some more inspirational stuff, I'd say. Yeah, you know, through a couple of these, you find it, you know, you run out of maybe some things to say and talk about and discuss. I tell you, as I started getting into the
01:05:41
Speaker
the arts and crafts and those they're like 20 something and I had to like cut things out there's too much because also it's more recent so there's more stuff available to see you know some of this you had to do some deep diving
01:06:07
Speaker
But it's been pretty cool. I've learned a ton going through all these periods of furniture so far. And I hope everybody else has as well, and maybe inspired them to do some research on their own. Yeah, do your own research. Because we all sort of tend to fall back to whatever it is convenient, you know?
01:06:37
Speaker
Now I can't really see us doing anything straight federal but you know they're definitely cues that we could pick up from that period. Yeah and you know stuff that we do prefer was inspired by everything that came before so you're always going to
01:06:56
Speaker
It's kind of like rock and roll. It all goes back to Chuck Berry somehow. And then Jimi Hendrix and all this. It's all built on the shoulders of these folks.
01:07:13
Speaker
So what we better do. Yeah. Well that's what we got for you this week folks. So next week we start what the Empire Empire. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to be going to be a good history lesson at the top of that one. Yeah. You know it's funny I'm having breakfast this morning. My wife says empire. What's that about Mike. I'm going to need my note. I want to get into this.
01:07:39
Speaker
Well folks, thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week. Yeah, take care.