This post is part of a blog series revealing the table of contents of upcoming Issue Eighteen. As is our custom, we’ll be discussing one article per weekday in order to give you a taste of what is to come.
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Issue Eighteen T.O.C. – Peter Hudson – “The Maker’s Eye”
Curators and historians have a lens through which they approach and assess material culture, e.g., a piece of 18th-century furniture. Often beginning with documentation, records, and other information, they take a data-driven approach to understanding the cabinetmaker and the context of the piece. But if you’re a woodworker yourself, you would probably look at that piece of furniture in a much different way.
Courtesy: Winterthur Museum
In Issue Eighteen, historian and author Peter Hudson shows how the eye of the maker can bring to light a wealth of information that might go otherwise overlooked. Drawing from his years of experience in the Colonial Williamsburg Joiners’ Shop, he explains how using woodworking tools and techniques common in past centuries unlocks an understanding of subtle tool marks, layout lines, and other remnants of a maker’s process. Through our own experience at the bench, Hudson shows how a real connection can be made to the work of the past.
Using a lovely early 19th-century Shaker desk as a key, Hudson unlocks those maker’s marks to gain new insights into the thought process of the original craftsman through an analysis of secondary surfaces, tool marks, and even mistakes and miscuts. Through this, a picture of the craftsman emerges. This knowledge can offer valuable support and illumination to the work of the scholar, giving a complete and compelling record of the work of the past.
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