medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
From: Henk 't Jong <[log in to unmask]>
> Suit yourself.
thanks, i will.
> There were no cabinetmakers in the Middle Ages, because there were no
cabinets.
?
?
http://www.greydragon.org/library/chests.html
(o.k., we have to grant that a "chest" is a "cabinet")
and you, of all people, Hunk, should know this one:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0811728544/ref=sib_dp_pt/002-5305665-4987254#reader-link
http://books.google.com/books?id=-TYISz9p3GQC&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=middle+ages+cabinet&source=web&ots=yLLgBvTk6z&sig=01-CDFvjOjgOVsy5rmGcBNEQtj0
>A joiner, as I wrote, just meant (in general) somebody who joined pieces of
wood together
would have been o.k., if you'd just stopped there, but NO...
>in a more finicky way than in the manner wooden housebeams and stiles were
joined together.
joining together rails and style (whether on a door or cabinet) is, by
definition "joinery."
it is, to my way of thinking, also "cabinetmaking."
and the joints involved in timber house construction were very, *very*
sophisticated (some even "finicky").
see Cecil Hewitt's wonderful studies:
English historic carpentry
London : Phillimore, 1980 [1997].
English cathedral carpentry
London, Wayland, 1974.
and his first one:
The development of carpentry, 1200-1700: an Essex study.
Newton Abbot, David & Charles, 1969.
which has many drawerings illustrating the "evolution" of various kinds of
complex joints --sometimes (often) a particular joint type "evolved" itself
into such inferiority that it was no longer workable.
and it seems that different joint types evolved at different speeds, so that
the *best* of all types would not be represented any single house.
> I was merely pointing to the fact that the description of what was called a
tekton was during the later middle ages called, in English, a joiner.
not as i understand, from DW & Terryl's remarks.
it *could* indicate a "joiner" --or it could mean any of several other (rather
specialized crafts).
> BTW If Joseph made plows and yokes, he also needed metal parts, if the
latter wasn't the very primitive all wooden plus leather and/or rope yoke,
that is. I wonder if he needed a smith for that or that being a tekton
included simple blacksmithing. I have a feeling that craftsmen in a near
eastern village around 2000 years ago could set their hand to more things
than one.
depends upon the village.
big villages, in prosperous regions, might have had a lot of very specialized
craftsmen.
small villages, in poverty-stricken regions, might have had guys who were not
"specialists" and were just trying to scrape out a living doing whatever they
could.
in any event, the crafts of woodworking/carpentry/cabinetmaking are *so* far
removed from the metalworking crafts that i would be extremely surprised if we
could document a single fellow mastering both.
cf., one of my favorite books:
George Sturt (1863-1927), _The wheelwright's shop._ Cambridge: The University
press, 1923. [reprint 1963ff]
a *wonderful* account (by one of the founders of "material folklore") of the
operation of a wheelwright's shop in an english village in the 1880s.
there were various kinds of woodworkers engaged at this little "factory"
(which employed 6-8 men, full time), but the Smith was seperate from them
(though attached to the shop).
and, he was deaf --an occupational hazard, it seems.
in Sturt's book the Smith is a remarkably gentle man, always seen walking the
streets of the village with a pleasant smile on his face.
but one day Sturt happened to see him as a wagon was going past which had a
bad bearing and was making a terrific screech.
everyone else put their hands to their ears, but the Smith's smile *really*
broadened and his whole face lit up.
he could *hear* the screeching, dontchasee.
and the sawyers (a pair of them, "pitman" and "tillerman") were itinerant,
traveling from village to village to saw up whatever logs the wheelwright's
had collected during the winter (when the sap was down and the ground frozen
so that the horses could pull them out of the woods or hedgerows), using the
sawyers' pit which was in the shop's courtyard.
being wanderers, they were without families, and were inclined to heavy
drinking.
ocassionally they would hit a nail or horseshoe in their sawing and that would
damage the saw, which would have to be re-filed and re-set.
this was the tillerman's job --since he was the Boss-- and only required on
man to do it.
if he didn't finish the job in short order the pitman (who wore a very
wide-brimmed hat, to protect him from the constantly falling sawdust) would
talke off to the village pub.
after about an hour there, sawing was over for the day, and the tillerman
would join him.
it seems that the width of the wagons in england was determined by local
custom and varied greatly.
this meant that the ruts in the roads varied in size as well, so that a wagon
from one part of the country would have a hard time traveling across the
various regions.
wonderful book.
c
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