The London Lounge

Inspired by MA's thread on bespoke secretaires, I thought that I might start something off on handmade dressing furniture generally - certainly joinery and cabinetmaking are other endangered trades. Here are some shots of an exhibition dressing cabinet, in English oak and ebony, made in 1953 in the Arts and Crafts style of William Morrris. The side shows handmade dovetails and
mortic[s]e and tenon joints with ebony wedges. The front incorporates raised and fielded panels and ebony handles. The plinth is made of ammonia-fumed oak.





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At the end of nearly every single day for over 50 years my father has emptied the contents of his pockets onto the top and then swept them into the drawer.
NJS

That is a very fine piece of furniture, JNS. If I would commission some bespoke piece of furniture nowadays, I would try and get some inspiration (I mean, only inspiration, not emulation) from a paragon of British architecture, Thomas Chippendale, whose work The gentleman and cabinet-maker's director: being a large collection of the most elegant and useful designs of household furniture in the Gothic, Chinese and modern taste I have just discovered to be available online, at: http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/DLDecArts/
This site contains an interesting selection of rare, fully readable books on the architecture and furniture of Victorian and Edwardian age.

I have several pieces of fine handmade furniture from McKinnon Furniture in Seattle. However, my dream would be to obtain fine renditions of Greene & Greene style furniture. They are the best architects / designers that I know of.

Some custom makers are competing against the stores so the prices are not always higher. The more old time craftsmanship skills are used the more time it takes to make, so those prices would be higher. What is nice about custom made is you get what you want.

I wish I had a shop. It would be fun making some of that fine stuff.

JDelage wrote:I have several pieces of fine handmade furniture from McKinnon Furniture in Seattle. However, my dream would be to obtain fine renditions of Greene & Greene style furniture. They are the best architects / designers that I know of.

Have a look at the American Bungalow collection by Thos. Moser. The craftsmanship is excellent and the Greene and Greene influence is very visible.

Thanks for the reference to Greene and Greene.

Shakers’ works, given the simplicity of their form, might be considered just the opposite of Chippendale’s furniture, but they are no less elegant. Here is a Shaker “hat-tree”. – I assume “hat-tree” is the right name of the device which is for a hat just what shoe-trees are for shoes, though I have not been able to find any occurrence of “hat-tree” with this specific meaning.

dopey wrote:Have a look at the American Bungalow collection by Thos. Moser. The craftsmanship is excellent and the Greene and Greene influence is very visible.

Yes, they do good work, they are similar to the McKinnon people. I'm even more interested in someone like Thomas Stangeland. His work is very evocative of Greene & Greene.

marcelo wrote:Thanks for the reference to Greene and Greene.

Shakers’ works, given the simplicity of their form, might be considered just the opposite of Chippendale’s furniture, but they are no less elegant. Here is a Shaker “hat-tree”. – I assume “hat-tree” is the right name of the device which is for a hat just what shoe-trees are for shoes, though I have not been able to find any occurrence of “hat-tree” with this specific meaning.

Marcelo, I have a couple of these (modern, much less elegant, with steel center screws and unfinished wooden ends). They go by the name of 'hat jacks." I believe, though I can't say for sure, that this is both a generic term (vs. 'hat tree') and a product name for the producer of my examples.

Presumably, the purpose is mainly to stop shrinkage?
NJS

That would be fantastic. I have found that it does not take cery long for hats to shrink, which is a shame as a good hat can and should last years and years. Does anyone know where one can purchase such device?

Cordovan

storeynicholas wrote:Presumably, the purpose is mainly to stop shrinkage?
NJS

Dear Couch and NJS, thanks for your post. The German call the Shaker piece of craftsmanship depicted above a “Hutspanner”. Since a “shoe three” is a “Schuhspanner” in German, I thought reasonable to translate “Hutspanner” as “hat tree”, and assume that it performs in a hat the same function a shoe tree has in our shoes.

Maybe a hat form?
NJS

marcelo wrote: “Hutspanner”

A "hat stretcher" perhaps?
Apropos hatters' instruments, most of which are wooden, have you seen the incredible patina they acquire after tens of years of use?

It seems that both “hat stretcher” and “hat jack” are the correct names. My tentative “hat-tree” will enter into the history of linguistics as an unfortunate hapax legomenon...

“hat stretchers”, as we can see below, come in different fashions, but the Shaker's seems to me the most elegant one thus far. The patina, as Costi has noticed, only enhances its beauty.

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Credits: [1] T P & H Trading Company; [2], [3], [4] Fedora Lounge; [5] David Morgan.

NJS, I hope you will understand “hand made furniture” in a sufficiently broad sense so as to accept the introduction of this topic in the thread you have initiated.

Marcelo - I am sure that anything handmade must have a place in the LL, mustn't it? Moreover, hatjacks are also relevant to dressing; mind you, one would need to be careful to make sure that the hatjack screw did not take the frame too tight inside the hat - especially as the wooden frame might swell in damp weather. There are similar dangers with screw-adjustable shoe trees - you can actually stretch the shoes if you are not careful
NJS