I might have to give up on the Hayrake Table.

[Tony Spear]

Found it!
Google Books is your friend!

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4PZ8 ... ys&f=false

Scroll to page 36.

 

[MikeG.]

What stikes me as just a little odd about this otherwise beautiful table is that the rails which meet the legs, the 135 degree ones, meet the leg just below the chamfer. In other words, they crash into a corner. Why wouldn't you extend the chamfer or raise the rail, such that the rails meet the leg at 90 degrees to a chamfer........ie full on the face of a chamfer? You would have to size the chamfer and the rail properly, and the leg might be octagonal as a result, but that would surely be visually more tidy than that awkward junction as per the photo?

Mike

 

[woodbloke]

'Gimson and the Barnsley's' by Mary Comino...a standard text IMO for anyone interested in the A&C movement. I bought the hardback version yonks ago when it was first published. Excellent read :wink: - Rob

 

[Benchwayze]

Hi Tony,

First off, thanks for all the information. It's good of you to take this trouble. I had found one or two items, but my mix-up with the names led me astray. Clearly Tony, you remember this stuff a lot better than I!

I am aware of the Barnsley/Gimson 'liaison' of course, and know about Sydney. All this was first learned at school. My woodwork teacher was a big fan of the A&C school. However, that was in the nineteen-fifties and other woodworking role-models have been discovered along the way! So it all spins around in there now!

For my final exams, I made a small side table, 'in the style'. The only details I can recall, are the quarter-sawn oak, heavy 'wagon-chamfers' on the legs and some 'scoop' decoration done with the scribing-gouges, around the table edge. But definitely no hay-rake underneath! 8)

The table was easy enough to make, but it did teach me the need for concentration and care. Sadly, the piece is no longer in the family. My sister 'gave it to charity' some time ago! As long as someone needed it, that's okay.

My own love of the style is based on the fact that a piece made well, from good material is going to be around for a long time, given normal care. Also, the designs never seem out of place in contemporary settings. Simply, it's always a 'proper-job' . Of course working properly is necessary to carry it off. So despite the other 'role models' I've come across over the years, I am always drawn to the 'simplicity' of Arts and Crafts.

So thanks again Tony. You've helped me enormously and I am grateful.

I shall be putting that book on my pressie list, as I have a birthday coming up!

Regards
John

 

[Benchwayze]

What stikes me as just a little odd about this otherwise beautiful table is that the rails which meet the legs, the 135 degree ones, meet the leg just below the chamfer. In other words, they crash into a corner. Why wouldn't you extend the chamfer or raise the rail, such that the rails meet the leg at 90 degrees to a chamfer........ie full on the face of a chamfer? You would have to size the chamfer and the rail properly, and the leg might be octagonal as a result, but that would surely be visually more tidy than that awkward junction as per the photo?

Mike

Hi Mike,

If you look at the table made by Don Weber, (Taunton Press Site) you'll see he did exactly that. He worked a wide chamfer down the inside edge of the legs, so the tenon went in at 90 degrees. Weakens the leg I suppose, but strengthens the junction of the stretchers and the legs, as well as simplifying construction. And yes it is a beautiful table.

If you go to the post by tja in this thread, you can link directly to a series of pictures showing Weber's WIP.

Regards
John

 

[Racers]

Hi,

At the end of the Viking tool chest episode with Don Webber they show his Hay Rake table.

I made a similar stretcher for my teak table

I used honemade beech plywood in the stretcher joints for strenght.


Pete

 

[Benchwayze]

Now there's a functional table Pete, and it's well made.

I like the solution you came up with for the stretchers. Also, where did you get the teak? Reclaimed?

The last time I tried to source teak, for a garden seat, I was told it was illegal to import it unless it was in the form of ready-made furniture.

Regards
John

 

[Racers]

Hi, Johm

Thanks, it was built three of christmases ago and I did the chairs a year later.

All reclaimed teak (old bench tops)

Pete

 

[Benchwayze]

Yes... Lovely stuff Pete.

I have to make diners too. I saw a Green and Green design on Amazon which I quite like. I'd need to do more research, as the notes said the design was good, but the execution had suffered. It's just a case of whether or not the Green and Green design would sit with a Hayrake type table!

It seems your spouse is as tolerant as mine, when it comes to acclimatising timber! 8)

Thanks Pete.
Regards
John

 

[Tony Spear]

Istuck up a post hereb earlier, but it doesn' seem to have appeared! Maybe one of the Mod's thought it was boring.

(Never let anybody else use your Computer unless you're looking over their shoulder - bit like your BU smoothers I suppose!).

Anyway BW:

one of Ernest Barnsley's great jobs was what was known at the time as "the Last Great Manor House in England" built for the Biddulph family and called Rodmarton Manor. All the furniture was built at the same time by the "Cotswold School" It certainly involved Gimson, Sydnety Barnsley and Peter Waals, but I don't know if Ernest had any more to with it other than tha architecture.

The place is open to the public and has possibly the greatest collection of Arts and Crafts furniture ever made for one specific location that still exists:

http://www.rodmarton-manor.co.uBack in the 80's there was definitely a Hay-Rake table there.

Note; if you want to know why I have these bit of info it is down to the really mis-spent part of my Youth which involved finding out of the way Cotswold pubs in the pre-breatherlizer days and talking to the old fellers who'd lived and worked in all these places all of their lives. Funnily enough, for all the talk of "Artisan, Craftsman, Utilitarian" and all that stuff, I don't remember seeing a single piece of "Cotswold School" furniture in the Daneway or Tunnel House pubs, or any of the local cottages that I was able to visit!

 

[Benchwayze]

Hi Tony,

Then you'll know about the 'Green Dragon', pub, that is chock full of 'The Mouseman's' furniture? I can't recall the village offhand, but a relative of my wife took us there, with deep hints about a surprise that I would enjoy!

Boy was he right! The place was bulging with solid oak, adzed tables, complete with carved 'mouses' of course!

I also had an email from Chetenham Museum today. There is a Hayrake table there, and if I make an appointment, I can also see the drawings for it, and a lot of other stuff made by these worthies! As soon as the Spring gets under way, I am off south!

Thanks again.
John

 

[Tony Spear]

That'll be the Green Dragon at Cowley. Kept in it's great days by a bloke called "Apple Williams". Never sure whether that wa s down to his face and complextion or the lethal Scrumpy he used to serve!

I understand it's now one of those Cotswold "foodie" type places' and I'll bet that you won't find anything of Robert Thompson's stuff in there nowadays. Probably went in the skip when they "refurbished" the place.

Actually, it's always seemed a bit odd to me that I don't remember ever seeing anything in the Daneway or the Tunnel House that was obviously from the "Cotswold School". "Artisan" furniture it may have been, but it wasn't made for Artisan users!

Bit of a rant here, but I don't believe that any of that lot were making working furniture for working people. They were amongstbthe first to understand "Marketing" and what it applied.

I once went to a dinner party in the Cotswold country and I sat on one of the legendary Gimson ladder back chairs and it was amongst the most uncumfortable couple of hours I,ve ever spent in my life (and that includes being concussed at Glos. All Blues! :shock: )

 

[bugbear]

I take it you found this one John:

They are beautiful aren't they?

Jim

I prefer a simpler interpretation - the inlay in particular jars with (my notion of) Arts and Crafts simplicity.

The round stay in the hay-rake is lovely though, and unusual.

Here's my google search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe ... f&oq=&aqi=

BugBear

 

[Benchwayze]

Hi BB,

I see what yu are getting at. I saw one of Gimson's display cabinets with this same inlay work all around the edge. It did look somewhat gaudy.

On page 37 of F&C (Issue No. 162) there's a photograph of another Hayrake-table interpretation. Made by someone called Lataxe, it seems. That fits in with the idea of an A&C ‘country-piece', but I think it would cost a bit more than a country-piece!

As Tony Spear suggested, maybe Gimson and Barnsley were more concerned with marketing to the well-heeled, than they were with providing local rustics with furniture! That doesn't stop me admiring the style, nor trying to make my version either, and after all, why should it? I couldn't afford a genuine piece, but at least I can have my own version!

Cheers

John

 

[woodbloke]

Gimson and Barnsley were more concerned with marketing to the well-heeled, than they were with providing local rustics with furniture!
John

This was the essence of their operation in the Cotswolds. The stuff they made was never intended for local consumption by ordinary folk...it was all intended for the London market, the 'gentry' and those who could afford it - Rob

 

[Paul Chapman]

If IKEA had been around in those days they could have made a killing selling to the ordinary folk :lol:

 

[Benchwayze]

So I am inclined to think Rob.

But I still want a Hayrake Table for myself. Therefore it's fortunate that, if the 'giftie' grants me the time, I can make one! I hope...

Regards
John

 

[bugbear]

Gimson and Barnsley were more concerned with marketing to the well-heeled, than they were with providing local rustics with furniture!
John

This was the essence of their operation in the Cotswolds. The stuff they made was never intended for local consumption by ordinary folk...it was all intended for the London market, the 'gentry' and those who could afford it - Rob

A bit "faux-pauvre" Marie Antoinette, then?

BugBear

 

[Benchwayze]

It's possible BB. But I question the attribution of that saying to a French person.

It always struck me as being a somewhat British idea to make that comparison between bread and cake.

Unless the French also ate bread and cake for tea!
I dunno!

John :lol:

 

[frugal]

It always struck me as being a somewhat British idea to make that comparison between bread and cake.

Unless the French also ate bread and cake for tea!
I dunno!

I had always assumed that the quote was meant to highlight the point that the nobility were so far removed from the general populous that they did not realise that if the poor could not afford bread that they were also not able to afford cake.