Post by Hideous Dwarf on Sept 23, 2008 20:00:03 GMT
The Master Craftsman
“D’you know what th’ole vicar says t’me, cat?” The animal stirred and stretched, pushing a tussle of wood-shavings off the side-bench onto the floor. “E says as ‘ow no finer craftsman e’er set adze t’oak. No finer craftsman. What d’you say to that then, cat? Eh?” The old man turned from the timber rack and eyed the lifeless lump of fur. “Reckon you’re right, cat. That’s about the worth of it.” He returned to his study of the wood.
They all praised in pretty words, who could not tell a dovetail from a dog’s tooth and Ezekiel Garth scorned their idle flattery. Today he would begin his final work – his epitaph – and damn them all if none but he should have the measure of it.
“D’you see this timber, cat? No, ‘course you don’t, you lazy beggar. Well, that’s parana pine. Cost me a fair shillin’ I can tell you.” A hint of sadness came into his old eyes. “But that don’t matter know, do it? he said.
The pine lay sorted and stacked from the mill where Ezekiel had supervised it’s planing to size and square lest any critic armed with caliper and rule should find the barest fault in it. He chose his timber well. The finest English oak for the memorial cross that stood amongst St. Jude’s decrepit stones. The sweetest, straight-grained ash to trim His Lordship’s barque and the whitest Baltic pine to set her masts and spars. But that was in the old days when there were still those who cared.
“Well, ‘s no good just lookin’ at it, cat. ‘T won’t build i’self.” With painstaking care and a slowness owed to his advanced years, Ezekiel turned each length of red-streaked pine beneath his eye, drawing the timbers he required, chosen for their shade and colour, and laying them on the workbench.
Then followed an hour of ancient ritual, the meticulous, almost religious preparation of the tools. The careful honing of grey steel chisels, the mortise and the bevel-edged, to a keenness owed to years of patient practice and rarely found in modern times even in the workshops of the faithful. “I’d give a royal ransom for the loan of your green eyes, cat.” Ezekiel Garth blinked, rubbed his eyes and squinted to study the edge again. Relying instead upon the still sensitive touch of a calloused thumb, he adjudged the iron ready and returned it to the rack.
The cat purred and stretched again as Ezekiel leaned across her for the mortise gauge, an elegant, double pointed instrument constructed by his own skilled hand. Carefully, lovingly, he wiped the linseed oil from the boxwood screw and the ash shaft before setting the points to a selected chisel and turning, at last, to the pine. After measuring and marking each mortise and tenon he set chisel to wood and struck once, a weighted blow with the beechwood mallet, and the last great work was begun.
Ezekiel Garth’s apprentice days had begun, not with the sound of beech on boxwood, but with bristle broom across workshop floor. For pennies and a bowl-a-day he had learned the craft of the carpenter from the keen observation of established craftsmen and the occasional privilege, wearily earned, of applying his mean skills with borrowed tools. He had learned under the watchful eye and heavy hand of Joshua Stead, an old and respected master of the wood, and had oft times suffered the cruel welts of the hickory switch as payment for his idleness. Such idleness was held to be the cause of any imperfection, any slightest deviation from a standard barely attained by practiced masters of the craft and yet Ezekiel’s back still bore the several marks of learning.
“Did any man ever take th’ickory t’your back, cat?” The cat twitched once and slept on whilst the master’s chisel cut and pared away the waste from another mortise. “Fair makes you ‘op about does th’ole ‘ickory.” Ezekiel laughed and shuddered slightly at the memory of it.
With the mortises cut and tenons hewn to slide home by naught but the strength of the old man’s arm, he set and braced the frames to stand twelve feet tall on the workshop floor. The centre newels rose a further eight, reaching high into the pitched slate roof until, with beams and transoms, trusses and joists housed and fixed to his satisfaction, the skeleton structure was complete.
Garth had sweated endless hours, a dozen and more in the working day, eighty in the week. Endless, back-breaking hours spent in endless repetition of a thousand tasks on the road to the Master’s Scroll. Every joint that can be cut, he cut and cut again until the floor of Joshua Stead’s held no scrap of discarded timber that did not bear the marks of his chisels and the stains of blood from his blistered hands. He learned the craft through weariness and pain, toiling sometimes through the night until the blocks he cast aside would build an arboreal cairn to his failures; until that weariness would drag him to and beyond the edge of sleep. Until he got it right!
“Now, what about this flooring, cat? Plywood, d'ye think, or shall we just knock apart a few ole packin’ cases for the carcassing?” Ezekiel shuddered, more than slightly this time, laughing again as he brushed the chippings from the bench and carried the chisels to their rack. The cat, tiring of the old man’s words and the intrusive clatter of the mallet, stirred, stretched and wandered out into the peaceful hum of approaching night.
“You’re right, cat,” the Master said as he watched her go, “it’s another day tomorrow.” Lifting the grey canvas apron over his head he folded it neatly onto the bench and, yawning, retired to his bed.
The cat and the carpenter returned with the dawn, the one to sleep and the other to work.
Ezekiel Garth eschewed the modern convenience of tongue-and-groove, relying instead upon the old skill of warm-dried boards planed and butted together, Working and sorting his timber like a jigsaw puzzle he matched grain and colour so well that the joints were lost to the eye as though the whole breadth of floor were hewn from one giant tree. Likewise, the door, a perfect match of blended pine cut and trimmed to a fine fit and hinged on the reverse side accurately - invisibly.
He stood to examine the work and nodded his approval. “It’ll do, cat. It’ll do.” The cat declined to acknowledge the old man’s words, stirring only in response to the private pleasure of a dream: a terrified, captive mouse perhaps or an amorous adventure of the night. Ezekiel ignored the sleeping beast and shamelessly admired the work of his hands. It was yet far from the finished perfection which alone might draw the praise of other men but he could see and revel in the raw-cut beauty of his craft.
He recalled the intricate panelled doors of inlaid walnut, elm and laburnum that he had made in the gloomy workshop at Joshua Stead’s. The decorative hinges, the filigree of brass and ormolu, the mortise locks, the tiny escutcheons, each cut with aching care to lay with neither gap nor lip under Joshua’s critical eye. “You’ll be damned in hell afore ye gain the Master’s Scroll, young Garth!” he had said, and this upon the marking of the boy’s sixth year of tortuous training in the art.
The door-bolt took a heavy toll of Ezekiel’s inventive genius. Several hours he laboured at the drawing board to design the direct-action lever which would mount on the face of the door, yet withdraw the bolt on the reverse. “That’s a tough one, cat,” he said, shaking his head at the many crude and scratched out sketches. The cat slept on in comfortable ignorance of both task and words whilst the draughtsman worked on, setting another thought to paper.
The plan, once drawn, required but a few hours’ work in construction and Ezekiel was pleased to have done with it. Onward then to chamfer each corner to a pleasing shape and on until evening, sanding every inch of wood to a satin smoothness.
Onward with the new dawn to stain and finish. He laboured many hours more in solitude for his feline companion failed to appear on the third day. He applied the liquid and the wax, burnishing by the power of his arm until the structure assumed the mellowed, aged look he craved to compliment the eminence of its purpose and the glory of his ancient craft. He worked until the sinews of his arm burned to pain him sorely and on he worked, beyond the pain until the muscles and tendons grew numb. “Not long now, cat,” he said to the empty hall. Despite her absence he still talked to the cat and received no less response.
Long had Ezekiel Garth laboured all those years ago with the beeswax and the cotton pad, working often long into the night to complete some piece of crafted wood that he would never see again. Through those tedious hours he learned the final art, took the final test that won him the coveted scroll he bore as Master Craftsman. And with the passing of his ninth year under Joshua Stead’s tutelage, Ezekiel Garth passed joyously beneath the lintel, never to return. Labouring under his own employ he built the finest furniture to match and oft surpass the work of Joshua Stead.
The pupil took the Master’s chair and his reputation spread by spoken testimony far beyond the county boundaries. To own a ‘Garth’ became the quest of every noble house and wealthy merchant and the craftsman enjoyed the fruits of fame so dearly bought. Bought at the cost of a young life imprisoned in the cruel service of Joshua Stead. Bought with the pain of the hickory branch and the boyhood tears of sorrow he shed. Ezekiel had paid a fearsome price and was pleased to accept the spoils.
And when the laminates came and the moulded board; when precious woods, by their scarcity, became the raw material of the veneer cutter; when the old demand died on the pyre of cheap-make and throw-away, he turned his skills, in desperation, to the new demand for pleasure boats and to the few remaining churches that still sought the treasures he had to sell. He witnessed the passing of an age; the gradual dying of his craft for the world had need of Ezekiel Garth and those of his like no more.
On the fourth day the cat returned to sleep once more upon the side-bench. “T’is done, cat,” the Master said. “The last great work of Ezekiel Garth and no man shall have need of it but I.”
From an oak chest, the first work of boyish hands, made long ago before they began to tremble, Ezekiel drew the Master’s Scroll, a faded yellowed parchment rolled and tied with a purple ribbon. He unrolled the parchment and read it through before tearing it into tiny pieces.
Gently, then, he lifted the cat and carried her slowly to the door. “Go back t’your master an’ live long, cat. Ezekiel Garth is closed for business now.” The cat purred as he set her down in the cobbled yard and closed the workshop door.
Turning a hemp to his will he felt the warmth of the morning sun that forced a passage through the dusty windows. One end he bent to the cross-beam and to the other he fashioned a dearer knot, Jack Ketch’s knot by name. And the sun shone bravely upon his labour.
With a final glance around the workshop, Ezekiel Garth slipped the loop about his neck, drew the coils up close by his ear, pressed the trap-door lever with his foot ...
... and the Master Craftsman was gone.
“D’you know what th’ole vicar says t’me, cat?” The animal stirred and stretched, pushing a tussle of wood-shavings off the side-bench onto the floor. “E says as ‘ow no finer craftsman e’er set adze t’oak. No finer craftsman. What d’you say to that then, cat? Eh?” The old man turned from the timber rack and eyed the lifeless lump of fur. “Reckon you’re right, cat. That’s about the worth of it.” He returned to his study of the wood.
They all praised in pretty words, who could not tell a dovetail from a dog’s tooth and Ezekiel Garth scorned their idle flattery. Today he would begin his final work – his epitaph – and damn them all if none but he should have the measure of it.
“D’you see this timber, cat? No, ‘course you don’t, you lazy beggar. Well, that’s parana pine. Cost me a fair shillin’ I can tell you.” A hint of sadness came into his old eyes. “But that don’t matter know, do it? he said.
The pine lay sorted and stacked from the mill where Ezekiel had supervised it’s planing to size and square lest any critic armed with caliper and rule should find the barest fault in it. He chose his timber well. The finest English oak for the memorial cross that stood amongst St. Jude’s decrepit stones. The sweetest, straight-grained ash to trim His Lordship’s barque and the whitest Baltic pine to set her masts and spars. But that was in the old days when there were still those who cared.
“Well, ‘s no good just lookin’ at it, cat. ‘T won’t build i’self.” With painstaking care and a slowness owed to his advanced years, Ezekiel turned each length of red-streaked pine beneath his eye, drawing the timbers he required, chosen for their shade and colour, and laying them on the workbench.
Then followed an hour of ancient ritual, the meticulous, almost religious preparation of the tools. The careful honing of grey steel chisels, the mortise and the bevel-edged, to a keenness owed to years of patient practice and rarely found in modern times even in the workshops of the faithful. “I’d give a royal ransom for the loan of your green eyes, cat.” Ezekiel Garth blinked, rubbed his eyes and squinted to study the edge again. Relying instead upon the still sensitive touch of a calloused thumb, he adjudged the iron ready and returned it to the rack.
The cat purred and stretched again as Ezekiel leaned across her for the mortise gauge, an elegant, double pointed instrument constructed by his own skilled hand. Carefully, lovingly, he wiped the linseed oil from the boxwood screw and the ash shaft before setting the points to a selected chisel and turning, at last, to the pine. After measuring and marking each mortise and tenon he set chisel to wood and struck once, a weighted blow with the beechwood mallet, and the last great work was begun.
Ezekiel Garth’s apprentice days had begun, not with the sound of beech on boxwood, but with bristle broom across workshop floor. For pennies and a bowl-a-day he had learned the craft of the carpenter from the keen observation of established craftsmen and the occasional privilege, wearily earned, of applying his mean skills with borrowed tools. He had learned under the watchful eye and heavy hand of Joshua Stead, an old and respected master of the wood, and had oft times suffered the cruel welts of the hickory switch as payment for his idleness. Such idleness was held to be the cause of any imperfection, any slightest deviation from a standard barely attained by practiced masters of the craft and yet Ezekiel’s back still bore the several marks of learning.
“Did any man ever take th’ickory t’your back, cat?” The cat twitched once and slept on whilst the master’s chisel cut and pared away the waste from another mortise. “Fair makes you ‘op about does th’ole ‘ickory.” Ezekiel laughed and shuddered slightly at the memory of it.
With the mortises cut and tenons hewn to slide home by naught but the strength of the old man’s arm, he set and braced the frames to stand twelve feet tall on the workshop floor. The centre newels rose a further eight, reaching high into the pitched slate roof until, with beams and transoms, trusses and joists housed and fixed to his satisfaction, the skeleton structure was complete.
Garth had sweated endless hours, a dozen and more in the working day, eighty in the week. Endless, back-breaking hours spent in endless repetition of a thousand tasks on the road to the Master’s Scroll. Every joint that can be cut, he cut and cut again until the floor of Joshua Stead’s held no scrap of discarded timber that did not bear the marks of his chisels and the stains of blood from his blistered hands. He learned the craft through weariness and pain, toiling sometimes through the night until the blocks he cast aside would build an arboreal cairn to his failures; until that weariness would drag him to and beyond the edge of sleep. Until he got it right!
“Now, what about this flooring, cat? Plywood, d'ye think, or shall we just knock apart a few ole packin’ cases for the carcassing?” Ezekiel shuddered, more than slightly this time, laughing again as he brushed the chippings from the bench and carried the chisels to their rack. The cat, tiring of the old man’s words and the intrusive clatter of the mallet, stirred, stretched and wandered out into the peaceful hum of approaching night.
“You’re right, cat,” the Master said as he watched her go, “it’s another day tomorrow.” Lifting the grey canvas apron over his head he folded it neatly onto the bench and, yawning, retired to his bed.
***
The cat and the carpenter returned with the dawn, the one to sleep and the other to work.
Ezekiel Garth eschewed the modern convenience of tongue-and-groove, relying instead upon the old skill of warm-dried boards planed and butted together, Working and sorting his timber like a jigsaw puzzle he matched grain and colour so well that the joints were lost to the eye as though the whole breadth of floor were hewn from one giant tree. Likewise, the door, a perfect match of blended pine cut and trimmed to a fine fit and hinged on the reverse side accurately - invisibly.
He stood to examine the work and nodded his approval. “It’ll do, cat. It’ll do.” The cat declined to acknowledge the old man’s words, stirring only in response to the private pleasure of a dream: a terrified, captive mouse perhaps or an amorous adventure of the night. Ezekiel ignored the sleeping beast and shamelessly admired the work of his hands. It was yet far from the finished perfection which alone might draw the praise of other men but he could see and revel in the raw-cut beauty of his craft.
He recalled the intricate panelled doors of inlaid walnut, elm and laburnum that he had made in the gloomy workshop at Joshua Stead’s. The decorative hinges, the filigree of brass and ormolu, the mortise locks, the tiny escutcheons, each cut with aching care to lay with neither gap nor lip under Joshua’s critical eye. “You’ll be damned in hell afore ye gain the Master’s Scroll, young Garth!” he had said, and this upon the marking of the boy’s sixth year of tortuous training in the art.
The door-bolt took a heavy toll of Ezekiel’s inventive genius. Several hours he laboured at the drawing board to design the direct-action lever which would mount on the face of the door, yet withdraw the bolt on the reverse. “That’s a tough one, cat,” he said, shaking his head at the many crude and scratched out sketches. The cat slept on in comfortable ignorance of both task and words whilst the draughtsman worked on, setting another thought to paper.
The plan, once drawn, required but a few hours’ work in construction and Ezekiel was pleased to have done with it. Onward then to chamfer each corner to a pleasing shape and on until evening, sanding every inch of wood to a satin smoothness.
Onward with the new dawn to stain and finish. He laboured many hours more in solitude for his feline companion failed to appear on the third day. He applied the liquid and the wax, burnishing by the power of his arm until the structure assumed the mellowed, aged look he craved to compliment the eminence of its purpose and the glory of his ancient craft. He worked until the sinews of his arm burned to pain him sorely and on he worked, beyond the pain until the muscles and tendons grew numb. “Not long now, cat,” he said to the empty hall. Despite her absence he still talked to the cat and received no less response.
Long had Ezekiel Garth laboured all those years ago with the beeswax and the cotton pad, working often long into the night to complete some piece of crafted wood that he would never see again. Through those tedious hours he learned the final art, took the final test that won him the coveted scroll he bore as Master Craftsman. And with the passing of his ninth year under Joshua Stead’s tutelage, Ezekiel Garth passed joyously beneath the lintel, never to return. Labouring under his own employ he built the finest furniture to match and oft surpass the work of Joshua Stead.
The pupil took the Master’s chair and his reputation spread by spoken testimony far beyond the county boundaries. To own a ‘Garth’ became the quest of every noble house and wealthy merchant and the craftsman enjoyed the fruits of fame so dearly bought. Bought at the cost of a young life imprisoned in the cruel service of Joshua Stead. Bought with the pain of the hickory branch and the boyhood tears of sorrow he shed. Ezekiel had paid a fearsome price and was pleased to accept the spoils.
And when the laminates came and the moulded board; when precious woods, by their scarcity, became the raw material of the veneer cutter; when the old demand died on the pyre of cheap-make and throw-away, he turned his skills, in desperation, to the new demand for pleasure boats and to the few remaining churches that still sought the treasures he had to sell. He witnessed the passing of an age; the gradual dying of his craft for the world had need of Ezekiel Garth and those of his like no more.
On the fourth day the cat returned to sleep once more upon the side-bench. “T’is done, cat,” the Master said. “The last great work of Ezekiel Garth and no man shall have need of it but I.”
From an oak chest, the first work of boyish hands, made long ago before they began to tremble, Ezekiel drew the Master’s Scroll, a faded yellowed parchment rolled and tied with a purple ribbon. He unrolled the parchment and read it through before tearing it into tiny pieces.
Gently, then, he lifted the cat and carried her slowly to the door. “Go back t’your master an’ live long, cat. Ezekiel Garth is closed for business now.” The cat purred as he set her down in the cobbled yard and closed the workshop door.
Turning a hemp to his will he felt the warmth of the morning sun that forced a passage through the dusty windows. One end he bent to the cross-beam and to the other he fashioned a dearer knot, Jack Ketch’s knot by name. And the sun shone bravely upon his labour.
With a final glance around the workshop, Ezekiel Garth slipped the loop about his neck, drew the coils up close by his ear, pressed the trap-door lever with his foot ...
... and the Master Craftsman was gone.