James M. Gaynor and Nancy L. Hagedorn. Tools: Working Wood in Eighteenth–Century America. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994. xiv + 140 pp.; 26 color and 142 bw illustrations, glossary, bibliography, index. $19.95.
In the words of the authors, this book is not meant to be a detailed technical discussion of eighteenth-century woodworking tools “but rather a summary overview of how these tools came to be, how their users acquired and learned to use them, and how they influenced the working lives and products of woodworking artisans” (p. ix). Within this framework, James Gaynor and Nancy Hagedorn have made a significant contribution to our understanding of tools and their impact on the life and work of early American woodworkers. They have also added to an increasing body of literature on the question of tool ownership and its meaning for artisans in a host of trades. Much of their information is relevant to the experiences of other producing craftsmen. Silversmiths, for instance, encountered many of the same obstacles when attempting to amass shop tools, and their working tools defined their products in much the same way as did the tools of woodworkers. What is perhaps most impressive about this book is the extent to which the authors have based their analysis on well-documented examples of eighteenth-century tools. Most collections include few tools that can be dated with any precision, and by bringing together the best documented examples, Gaynor and Hagedorn have provided curators of such collections with valuable information for dating and cataloguing the objects in their care. They have also proffered ample data for scholars attempting to put those tools into a wider historical context. The emphasis of the book and the exhibition that it accompanied is on the experience of artisans working in Virginia. Although many of the tools included in the book were owned by Virginia woodworkers, the authors flesh out their treatment with tools owned elsewhere in America. Most of the mass-manufactured tools treated here are of English origin, but the authors have also included as many American-made tools as possible, as well as some intriguing examples of tools made by the artisans who owned them.
The book is divided into two sections. The first section, lavishly illustrated with tools, period prints and paintings, and advertisements and documents, puts tools and the artisans who owned them into broader perspective and clearly demonstrates the symbiotic relationship between tradesmen and their tools. Covering sixty-two pages, this section of the book includes chapters on “English and American Toolmaking,” “Tools for Sale,” “Tools and Work,” and “Tools and Products.”
The first of these chapters, “English and American Toolmaking,” explains the development of the English toolmaking industry during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with particular attention to the specialties of the principal manufacturing centers. The authors discuss the difficulties facing American toolmakers who attempted to compete with these inexpensive and well-made imports and explain that many Americans made tools or modified imported tools for their own use. The products of a few notable American artisans who worked principally as toolmakers—including Francis Nicholson of Wrentham, Massachusetts (began working 1728), Samuel Caruthers of Philadelphia (beginning in the 1760s), and Thomas Napier of Philadelphia (beginning 1774)—are pictured here, and the authors draw extensively on surviving documents regarding American tool manufacture.
“Tools for Sale” explores the sources of tools for American cabinetmakers, joiners, coopers, and instrument makers and illustrates several well-known and well-documented chests of cabinetmakers’ tools, including the Benjamin Seaton chest (English, 1797); the George William Cartwright II chest (Ossining, N.Y., 1819); the Thomas and Warren Nixon chest (Framingham, Mass., late eighteenth to early nineteenth century); the Duncan Phyfe chest (New York, ca. 1800–1830); and a chest of tools owned by an anonymous upstate New York craftsman, now at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown. The authors’ primary focus, however, is on the sources from which Virginia woodworkers obtained their tools. Although Gaynor and Hagedorn comment that there is little documentation of this process in Virginia, they proceed to provide an exhaustive treatment of what information does exist—advertising, bills, and so on. They also make excellent use of available documents on such often-forgotten issues as how apprentices obtained tools and the process (and price) of importing tools directly from England. They include an excellent description of merchant factors in Virginia and their business dealings with agents in England.
“Tools and Work” deals with all aspects of the topic, beginning with the process by which apprentices learned to use common tools and developed design skills. Gaynor and Hagedorn use extant tool kits to explore how the availability of certain tools controlled variations in the work carried out by different types of woodworkers, from the general purpose woodworkers of rural areas to the highly specialized artisans of the seacoast towns. They find that specialized tools allowed artisans to create complex objects with ease, giving them a competitive edge over their fellow artisans, and that these tools standardized production in ways that allowed apprentices to assist masters in making complex items.
“Tools and Products” takes this discussion further by examining how specific objects were made by using particular assortments of tools and how the technical preferences of individual workers affected their choice of materials as well as the look of the objects they made. The authors suggest that “the practical capabilities of tools also influenced consumers’ expectations regarding other product characteristics such as the uniformity of details” (p. 52). They further demonstrate how understanding the process by which an object was made helps us understand the decisions artisans made in allocating their labor. Finishing furniture, for instance, involved the use of a succession of planes, and cabinetmakers made decisions on how much to finish surfaces according to how visible the surfaces would be to the eventual customer. Such economies have been used by scholars to identify works from certain shops and regions, and here the study of tools helps us understand the decisions these artisans made.
The second section of the book is devoted to a detailed treatment of the design and evolution of several groups of tools—layout tools, chisels and gouges, saws, boring tools, and planes. The authors suggest that readers not familiar with basic tools and their uses consult this portion of the book first, a recommendation that even those fairly well acquainted with woodworking tools would do well to heed. In general, these discussions are clear and straightforward, with helpful illustrations that occasionally serve to explain the use or construction of a specific tool and that give helpful technical information to assist readers in dating tools themselves. These sections of the catalogue are extremely useful because they serve to elucidate the process by which these tools evolved and because they clearly demonstrate differences in homemade versus manufactured tools, English versus American tools, and early-eighteenth-century tools versus early-nineteenth-century tools. At times, however, it is possible for the reader to become confused because most “entries” attempt to describe tools that are grouped together in single composite photographs. The descriptors used to identify individual tools are not always consistent within a single discussion, and items grouped together in the same photograph are not necessarily treated in a consistent order (e.g., right to left, top to bottom). The authors undoubtedly believed that marks or other distinguishing features that would help readers understand the text would be visible in the final printed halftones. Unfortunately, sometimes these marks just do not show up well, either because the pictures are dark or because they are smaller than the authors anticipated. More clarity might have been achieved if each photograph in this section had been given a caption to accompany the narrative paragraphs.
I found only this one minor flaw in an otherwise important achievement, however. Tools: Working Wood in Eighteenth-Century America is a book that everyone interested in early American artisans from all producing trades—not just woodworking—will find fascinating. Those with a special interest in woodworkers and their tools will find it indispensable.
Barbara McLean Ward
University of New Hampshire