I don't know when this article will be published, probably in the late spring or early summer but, as I sit and write it, the first shoots of spring flowers are poking up through the ground in my garden. I am not a great gardener, but I do enjoy sitting and looking at how nature has put together shapes and forms into strong viable constructions. Yet, this spring I am reminded of a job we finished last year which was particularly involved with the garden, the flowers and the seasons of nature.

The brief for this particular job was a small cabinet to house a record deck, an amplifier, a tape deck and a small collection of CDs and tapes. The cabinet had to have a contemporary style, yet it had to sit alongside two pieces of particularly good furniture. One was an especially fine example of a Dutch marquetry chair. This was extremely beautiful with very fine shape and the most attractive decoration. The second piece was a long case grandmother clock in William and Mary period style, finely made with cross grained Walnut mouldings and Burr Walnut panels. I am very fond of William and Mary or the period in English furniture known as "Walnut Period". The cabinetmaking skills of the period was not very refined but the designs were particulary relevant to contemporary style. Simple, well proportioned shapes were often combined with rich surfaces and very sophisticated mouldings to produce an overall look of harmony and restrained richness.I suppose if I had not been so in tune with these two pieces of furniture I would not have designed the piece of furniture I did.

The complication came with the marquetry. My client, bless her heart, is a gardener so, as we talked about what kind of a piece of furniture was required, it became clear to me that perhaps we could use marquetry on a series of panels around the cabinet to illustrate the four seasons and reflect my client's passion for plants and flowers. The idea had a symmetry to it, a sense of balance that was quite right. The only thing that was lacking was any real skill and knowledge on the subject of marquetry. About ten or twelve years ago I had an idea of using marquetry on contemporary furniture, I even went as far as to write to Art Veneer Company in Mildon Hall and get a copy of their plans for a marquetry Donkey. Like a lot of ideas it never quite reached fruition. I made the Donkey, or I made most of the Donkey, but stopped at the point where I needed metal fixtures and saw blade clamps making up. At the best of times I am not a gifted metal worker and at that time I knew nobody who could easily and cheaply make these fittings for me. So for twelve years the poor old Donkey was unused and unloved. A solution to a problem that had not yet been properly formulated.

However, now my situation is rather different. I now have several people to help me solve problems like this. On this occasion Tom Cornish was the man who put it all together and made it work. First he checked over my woodwork. This caused some mirth in the workshop for the Beech which I had used to make the donkey had not reacted very well to being stored in the loft of my house. The extremes of temperature and humidity common in the loft of a house had cracked one or two the glue lines but, by and large, it was still a pretty serviceable piece of equipment. Now the marquetry donkey is a pretty sophisticated and specialized piece of equipment. Basically, it allows a craftsman to sit astride the seat, place the job at eye level at a convenient spot in front of him and hold it in position by a foot operated clamp. The job is then sawn with a hand held frame saw or fret saw working horizontally, again at eye level. The beauty of the tool is that the work is controllable, it is possible to stop the saw, slow it down, ease it gently around the corner and at the same time see exactly where you are in relation to the line that you are attempting to cut along. Another advantage is that, as the job is being held in a vertical position, all the sawdust falls away leaving the line clear and in view. It seems to me that the marquetry donkey is a perfect example of a piece of equipment that has not seen much improvement since the eighteenth century. This, I suppose is born out when professional marquetry cutters, such as Max Cooper, still use a marquetry donkey for their work.

Having checked over the woodwork and got the various bits of metal work sorted out at a local engineering shop, Tom began fiddling about with marquetry blades. At this stage we both ran up against our own ignorance. We knew the principle, because I had seen a marquetry donkey in use in the East End of London, but we had precious little practical experience to guide us. Fred at Art Veneer Company was very helpful, he sent us a selection of marquetry blades and spent some time talking Tom through the technique but basically his advice was "suck it and see". I suppose over the telephone that would be the only sensible advice you could give on the subject. There are, you see, so many variables, the thickness of the pad you are cutting, the type of blade you are using, how fast you are cutting — all these elements needs to be balanced and that can best be learnt by what social psychologists would call cognitive reflection. Or, in plainer English, "suck it and see

CRAFT OF CABINETMAKING 11 by David Savage

First published in "The Woodworker" Magazine

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