Chapomatic

While looking for ways to help my kids learn in the future to understand guys like James Krenov while personally not knowing much about woodworking, I noticed this little bit in a biographic sketch of Woodwright’s Shop creator Roy Underhill:

“Working at Williamsburg was wonderful in that I could walk from a master wheelwright, to a master cooper, to a master cabinetmaker, to a master gunsmith, to a master blacksmith, all at the top level of artisanry, and just ask any question I had.” He stayed on as the master housewright for 10 years, teaching visitors how things were done and pressing them into service doing the work, and spent five more doing program development.
He eventually left in a disagreement over authenticity.

“We were building slave quarters, which, of course, would have been built by the slaves themselves. The architectural historians insisted on making the buildings look shoddy and poorly constructed. In reality, the slaves were the ones who did most of the work, and were most adept and skilled at such tasks. The architect insisted on poorly constructed chimneys, wood with bark left on, and other things that were supposed to make visitors feel sorry for the slaves, but none of this was realistic.” He objected, but the architects insisted, and won.

Check out the link for discussion about John Hemings, one of Thomas Jefferson’s slaves–a skilled woodworker and human being who ‘didn’t even own himself’.

Roy Underhill, by the way, has a program on PBS I hadn’t seen in a long time–but it’s a good program. He builds things with wood during the show, and the show’s done well. The Highland Woodworking blog notes that you can see those shows for free on the web!