Reviews

Review: The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery

The Complete Illustrated Guide to JoineryI got The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery a few years ago, but it’s such a great book I thought I’d give it a review here. Written by Gary Rogowski and published by Taunton Press, this is a beautiful book just to look at and hold. Page after page is filled with crisp color photography alongside clean and clear text. But look deeper and you’ll also find a wealth of information.

This book attempts to break down and categorize many common types of joinery. First, into the two basic systems of box joinery and frame joinery, and then into a number of subcategories, such as mortises, miter joints, lap joints, and dovetails. Each chapter defines and describes a number of related joints, along with numerous variations and deviations. It then steps through a number of methods to create each one. For many joints, this means it gives a method to build it out of either hand tools or power tools depending on which you prefer or what the situation calls for.

In addition to the photographs generously peppered throughout, Rogowski also intersperses a number of diagrams and illustrations to give further clarity to how these joints come together.

Though some of these joints may look fancy and complicated, the joints in this book are really the more common workhouse joints used to solve the majority of carpentry problems. You won’t find the extremely complex and decorated types of joints used in previous centuries, or any of the exotic joinery solutions of Japanese and Chinese carpenters. This book deals almost entirely with joints where two pieces of wood meet; it’s when three pieces of wood come together that joinery starts getting really interesting (this book does have a few such joints toward the back, so it is not completely devoid of them).

Still, I love this book. It’s the kind of book you can buy and learn a lot from, then let sit on your bookshelf looking pretty for a few years, then pick up again and realize you still have a lot to learn.

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The Old Proproom at the Walnut St Theatre, 1910

The following comes from the New-York tribune, July 03, 1910. Written by Charles Bloomingdale, Jr., it tells the story of Charles Hoffner, props master at the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia, PA. Incidentally, the Walnut is the first professional theater I’ve ever worked at, as an apprentice stagehand ninety-one years after this article was written. I’ve cut some of the parts that don’t deal with props to keep this short, but you can read the full article at the above link.

Charles Hoffner
Charles Hoffner

Hats off, gentlemen! Age, in the person of the Past, quavers “Good morrow” to you: the old, musty, dusty proproom of the Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia bids you come in from the garish glare of to-day and sink in its shadows of bygone yesterdays, bids you see and touch the things that Forrest, Booth, Macready, Kean, Charlotte Cushman, Dion Boucicault, and other giants of the stage saw and touched–yes, and used–in those dear, dead days when the drama was palmy. Hats off, gentlemen and enter!

The Walnut Street Theater in Philadelphia is the oldest standing playhouse in America. In February, 1808, it was erected, and for one hundred and two years it has flourished. Once it stood at the outskirts of the town, then the center; now the town has grown many, many miles beyond it. But its proproom–its old proproom; for it has two now–is the same as when Pepin and Preschard opened the theater with a circus and pantomime one hundred and two years ago.

What is a proproom? A proproom is a room for properties. And what are properties? Anything and everything, costumes excepted, used on the stage during a play. A property room looks like the average junkshop, possibly more so. A chair is a property; so is a clock, a cane, a candle, a chain, a corkscrew. And a bottle is a property too, and the forged will and the mortgage papers, a horseshoe, a feather duster, and a paper of pins. And the property man of the theater has all these hundreds of seemingly inconsequential things under his thumb and gets them when they’re needed. Continue reading The Old Proproom at the Walnut St Theatre, 1910 →

Useful Sites

Last Links of Summer (observed, not actual)

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Well, well, we made it almost a whole week without a hurricane or earthquake here in New York. Here are some links to keep you occupied over the weekend. I would wish you a happy “three-day weekend”, but most of you are in theatre, and we don’t get holidays off.

List of Tools is more than just a list of tools; it breaks down all sorts of tools into different categories, tells you what they are used for, and includes all sorts of other relevant information. It’s great when you want to know the difference between a ball peen and a straight peen hammer, or how to measure the inside diameter of a pipe.

Here is an interview with Clive Lankford of Lancaster’s Armouries, a British sword and armor maker that specializes in stage combat weapons.

The Washington Post did a nice spread on Chris Young, prop master at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. It’s wonderfully photographed, and always great when a larger media outlet pays attention to the work that goes on behind the scenes.

How old is your globe? This site lists various names of now defunct countries, along with when they changed and what their modern equivalent is. So if you find an older name on your globe, you know how old your globe is. Also great in reverse, for when you need to make a globe or a map and want to make sure you aren’t using any anachronistic geography.

Finally, here is a walk through a haunted house. The pictures are all taken with flash, so you really get the details of the construction behind a lot of the pieces and scenes.

 

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Salaries of US Theatre, 1798

One of our earliest looks at theatre in the US comes from William Dunlap’s A history of the American Theatre, published in 1832. In it, he presents the following salary information, which we can glean some insight on to how props were acquired and who was in charge.

The theatre of New-York had now but one director or manager,—a circumstance which had not occurred in the United States before. An estimate of the expenses of the theatre at this time, 1798-9, will perhaps be acceptable to the general reader, and useful to those concerned in similar establishments. The salaries to actors and actresses, as follows, amount to 480 dollars weekly, viz: Mr. and Mrs. Hallam, 50; Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, 45—the first 20, the second 25; Mrs. Oldmixon, 37; Mr. Cooper, 25; Mrs. Melmoth, 20; Mr. Tyler, 20; Mr. Jefferson, 23; Mr. Martin, 18 (and for superintending the stage and making properties, 7 more); Mr. Hallam, jun., 16; Mrs. Hogg, 14; Mr. Hogg, 13; Miss Westray, 13; Miss E. Westray, 12; Mr. Lee, 12, as performer and property-man; two message carriers (each 8), 16; Mrs. Seymour, 16; Mr. Seymour, 9; Mr. Miller, 12; Miss Hogg, 4; estimate for three others, 54 ; Mrs. Collins, 12; with supernumeraries, 32. To this was added a wretched prompter of the name of Hughes, at 10, and an intelligent box-office keeper, Mr. Joseph Falconer, at 14. Dressers, 20; orchestra, 140 (consisting of Mr. James Hewet, as leader; Messrs. Everdel, Nicolai, Samo, Henri, Ulshoeffer, Librecheki, Pellessier, Dupuy, Gilfert, Nicolai, jun., Adet, Hoffman, and Dangle). Other expenses were estimated thus:— Lights, 109; Labourers, 24; Doors and Constables, 50; Cleaning, 5; printing, 68; properties, 6; wardrobe, 15; fires, 15; Mr. Ciceri and his department (the scenery and painting, not including materials), 60; rent, 145; amounting to $1161, without including any remuneration for the personal services of the manager. (Dunlap, pg 248)

[emphasis mine]

From that, we can see that one of the actors in the company received additional compensation for superintending the stage and making the properties. I’m not sure what “superintending the stage” actually means, since another person is listed as the prompter, which I thought to be the person managing the rehearsals and performances. Another actor served a dual role as performer and property-man, though no extra salary, probably because he plays only minor roles. Finally, there was an estimated $6 spent per week on properties, though whether that is for buying and renting items, or for materials to make them is not stated.

Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies