Artisans

Artisans

It’s fair to say that artisans had an influence in securing the right to vote for you and me; it’s something that isn’t widely appreciated these days, and especially by those who are dissatisfied by their government of the day or what they stand for. My Welsh coal mining ancestors were involved in the Chartist movement, which was one of the small cogs that contributed to Britain’s First Reform Act of 1832... wrestling some of the political power from the elites of the day into the hands of workers. They risked their loss of freedom or even death by standing up for the rights of their fellow man.

Today, we call them ‘tradesmen’, but many of the trades that were, are no longer performed today or have morphed into being done differently. As a youngster I was fortunate enough to watch some artisans as they performed their craft, and I have tried to emulate some of them over the years.

My father had a business selling milk and owned a couple of trucks... under the council laws, businesses with heavy vehicles had to have some form of identification of who they were, which doubled in our case as advertising. The identification was done in an attractive way by artisans. Today it is done just as expertly with vinyl lettering or graphics or something called, ‘vehicle wrapping’, but for our trucks, we had the sign-writer visit our place. The guy turned up with his paint pots and brushes and with a stick with a pad on the end to support his paint-brush hand. He marked out the general shape with chalk... ‘Halswell Dairy’ was written in a half circle on the door, then my father’s name was written horizontally beneath, on an another line beneath, he wrote our phone number. To make it stand out, there was shading... it was all done with skill, based on the painters eye, knowledge of writing styles, and quickly. On the tray, he did old-fashioned coachwork, perfectly straight lines and squiggles.

I’ve had a go at it, not successfully, or freehand, but I learned at school about a stencil cut from cardboard. A square of five inches each side – draw a faint line in the centre facing and a heavier line on each side of it at half an inch making the centre rib one inch wide. Top and bottom score a line one inch wide parallel to the top and bottom; on each side draw a line one inch from the edge. So inside you should have two oblongs that you cut out. With that you can draw any number or letter – the sharp points can be trimmed off to make a nicer shape. Give it a try.

We had a piano in our house, not that I tickled the ivories, but I watched the man who came give it a facelift; if that’s the right term. The varnish had lost it’s glow. His tool for preparing the surface wasn’t sandpaper but a thin piece of metal that had been carefully burred slightly. He used it to gently scrape the surface down to the timber... which I guess was burred walnut. He was really careful and time seemed not to matter to him. When he was satisfied and had removed every bit of dust, he prepared shellac – sort of flakes that required some heating – and he made a pad of cloth that he used to wipe the polish on... it took several coats. The man took the keys off the piano and cleaned the ivory... I wasn’t there so have no idea exactly how he did it, but those keys came up sparkling! In woodwork class, we had a try with the burred steel and shellac on veneer, but sadly I wasn’t competent enough to make a good job of it, but I did use a similar pad to spread linseed oil on my cricket bats... which lasted for several seasons.

Artisans seemed to appear randomly; I was visiting a friend whose parents had been carrying out expensive renovations to their house, and they had employed a man with fine brushes to paint wood gain onto door architraves... that is the door surroundings. Apparently it was a thing in the past if you had the money. Simply put wood grain is the growth rings of a tree when cut longitudinally and knots are the cross section of a branch. A knot can be inter-grown, or alive when the tree is cut, or if it is darker than the surrounding wood, the branch was dead... and sometimes bark surrounds the knot, which is a bark-encased knot. The bark can rot quite quickly and the knot sometimes falls out... creating a knot-hole. And in New Zealand there can be small round holes where a stem cone was attached to the trunk of the tree and push out as the trunk grows.

Having spent years growing Radiata Pine, and pruning the bottom of the trunk to grow ‘valuable clear, knot-free timber, the house we built was of exposed Radiata Pine that hadn’t been pruned, thus showing knots, stem cone holes and grain... much like the inside of a log cabin. The beauty of that... if you have an imagination, it is possible to see shapes, like cats, ghosts, birds and clouds. The why of anyone painting over timber and then painting on grain is, or was the prerogative of the person with the money, but it was popular to do so in the past.

Beside my keypad, I have a notebook to write down little notes that take my fancy as I’m entertaining myself on the computer (or researching), and because I’m left handed, it sits on my left and I use the mouse right handed. Probably from those past influences, when my entertainment fails to entertain, I doodle on my notebook where frequent images turn out to be letters with shading and various wood grains, sometimes with knots.