#HTE

Tools & Craft #7: We’ve Republished the Finest Book Ever Written on Architectural Woodworking

Whether you are in school or not, do you realize how easy it is, today, to get information that previously took people decades to amass? There are a lot of good books on woodworking out there, some old, some new. After the success of The Joiner and Cabinet Maker, which I co-wrote with, Christopher Schwarz and the anonymous original 1839 author, I realized that it would be fun to reprint other books in my collection that deserve a wider audience and are not generally available.

So, here’s a good place to start: Paul Hasluck’s Carpentry and Joinery Illustrated is the finest book ever written on architectural woodworking. Written in 1907, the height of fancy house building, it contains more than 1,800 drawings and detailed instructions on everything house-related. From step-by-step instructions on laying out a simple sash window on a story stick to making single, double, and triple hung windows, wainscoting, doors of all complexity, you name it.

This is a book designed to teach a turn-of-the-century joiner how to master the nuances of the craft. I cannot imagine anyone who is serious about traditional homebuilding, either as a restorer, architectural woodworker, designer or architect not having this book.

You industrial designers or ID students reading this will have an advantage.

That’s because unlike most modern woodworking books, Hasluck assumes you have pretty decent experience in making things, so he covers a lot of ground and really goes into the anatomy of design. It’s all well and good to specify, say, a circular-headed casement window–but how do you actually lay out all the bits and pieces? That’s what this book is about, and why restorers consider it a treasure.

As a real bonus my friend Roy Underhill graciously volunteered to write a new introduction for the book.

I’ll drop the number again: The book has over 1,800 engravings and the original had a dozen colored plates–which, sadly, we could not afford to reproduce in color without making the book prohibitively expensive. However, thanks to the miracle of the Internet we are posting a PDF of the color plates HERE. This will also give you a flavor of some of the complexity and general wonderfulness of the detailed illustrations that are all over the book.

For a snippet of the contents, click here. You can order the book here.

About the cover: Some folks think that a facsimile should also reproduce the original cover. I have no objection to this, but I think it depends on the context. The original cover for this book was brown, not fancy, and embossed. The design just doesn’t work in the glossy context of a modern cover. The other thing is that this book is relevant and important now—it’s not supposed to be an historic relic.

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