May | June 2006 Volume 80 Issue 3 |
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Feature Article Spanning the Centuries Colonial Williamsburg's craftspeople make their 21st-century livings by plying 18th-century trades
By Mary Ann Hemphill Here in the 18th century, it takes between 40 and 90 hours to build a wheel. The most complicated step, says Colonial Williamsburg's master wheelwright John Boag, is cutting the rectangular spoke mortises in the nave (hub). After the spokes are driven in the curved sections (felloes), they are fitted onto the nave with a mortise and tenon joint. “People think we are really bizarre. And we are eccentric people,“ confesses Boag. “Why else would we be here? We are preserving a trade that doesn't really need to be preserved.” Boag is one of 96 talented craftspeople employed in the historic district of Virginia's Colonial Williamsburg—men and women who make their livings by producing 18th-century items with 18th-century tools and methods. Here, preserving antique trades is as important as preserving antique buildings. The wheelwright and his colleagues follow an unusual way of life, one requiring them to make a daily jump between centuries. Each morning they leave their modern homes, take off their watches and change their clothes as well as their mindsets to assume the jobs, styles and viewpoints of their colonial predecessors. “Nowhere else in the country are the 18th-century trades practiced to the extent that they are in Colonial Williamsburg,” says Boag. “Nowhere else in the country can you make a career out of practicing these trades.” The career path for a Colonial Williamsburg craftsperson is that of the 18th century: apprentice, journeyman, master. Boag describes the apprentice as “the learner,” the journeyman as “the workhorse.” While learning the requisite skills, Boag's apprentices may remake the same wheelbarrow 10 times. From the 18th-century point of view, the apprentices' routine work frees the journeymen to be more productive, thus making the shop more profitable. In his open-air wheelwright shop on the grounds of the Governor's Palace, Boag explains, “The wheelwright builds anything with wheels—work vehicles, ox carts, wagons, hand carts, wheelbarrows and wheels for the carriages.” On Duke of Gloucester Street, the historic district's main thoroughfare, the silversmith's shop displays articles in all stages of production from roughly-hammered round pieces to a shimmering, elegantly-pierced bread basket. Primed by bellows, the fire heats silver pellets or ingots. The work can be loud—as when master silversmith George Cloyed and journeyman Preston Jones are doing their orchestrated dance of rising on their toes, swinging hammers overhead and striking alternating blows to flatten a heated ingot into a thin sheet of silver—or quiet, as when Gayle Clark, the other journeyman (this is the term she prefers) is patiently piercing the intricate cutwork in a silver bread basket. Successive hammering in a circular pattern with consecutively more delicate hammers, followed by polishing with pumice, rottenstone and jeweler's rouge, eventually form the thin sheets of silver into beautiful, graceful objects of heirloom quality. The bread basket that Gayle is working on will take 16 weeks to make. It will sell for $30,000. The bookbinder's shop is across a bricked courtyard from the printer's, both set in a hollow below the Colonial Post Office on Duke of Gloucester Street. The shop makes books for Colonial Williamsburg's use and for special presentations, such as the exquisite ship's log given to King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway to commemorate their visit to Colonial Williamsburg. In the 18th century, the bookbinder's major function was making blank ledgers for business people. “Books for reading were a status symbol,” says master bookbinder Bruce Plumley. “But business ledgers were a necessity.” While pressing and stitching his books, Plumley comments, “People can't believe that there is so much work in a blank book. There are 28 steps in making a ledger.” The process begins with a labyrinthine system of folding and collating pages. The folded pages go into a standing press. After intricate work in hand stitching, gluing, rounding and backing (establishing the precise curvature of the book's spine), attaching the boards, trimming the edges in the press and plough, then finishing the book with calfskin, sheepskin or goatskin, comes Plumley's favorite part, and also the hardest part—the gold tooling. “You need a flair for this,” Plumley declares. “You first treat the leather with egg white, heat the 18th-century decorative wheels or stamps to a precise temperature with only a two or three degree leeway. Then you press this finishing tool over gold leaf.” This is all freehand. The design may be sketched on paper—or just in Plumley's mind—but no pattern is drawn on the leather prior to tooling. At the Harnessmaker-Saddler's shop, journeyman harnessmaker Eric Myall emphasizes the importance of leather in Colonial Virginia. “We can't live without it. We have leather mugs, leather lids, leather wine flasks and bottles. It's also our elastic; think of leather garters. We have no zippers, no snaps, no Velcro. Leather is our Saran Wrap.” But there are limits. “The Virginia gentry in leather clothes?” Myall is shocked at such an outlandish idea. “Never. That would be like wearing a Glad Bag to the White House. Leather was a very cheap material then, worn by farmers and slaves.” Patter like Myall's gives visitors lessons on daily colonial life and work. He contends, “If I can have a laugh and a joke with somebody, they will learn a lot more.” Responsible for outfitting 30 horses, the fife and drum corps, militia and several carriages, the four harnessmakers have a heavy and varied workload. “We get such a conglomeration of work here. We never know what is next,” says Myall. The most involved project is a saddle with hidden stitching—a three-day job, with much of the time spent waiting for wet leather to dry. Leather fire buckets hang overhead alongside straps, harnesses and bags. The rich smell of leather permeates the room. After rapidly firing off a list of items that his colonial predecessor sold—“clapboards, rum, limes, shoes, brass nails, window glass, coal, butter, cheese and brandy”—Myall describes his shop as “the 18th-century equivalent of a 7-Eleven store. It had everything but the Slurpee.” Although the craftspeople tread the same pebbled streets to their shops, their original journeys to Colonial Williamsburg were on varied paths. Plumley and Myall came from England. Plumley is a Fellow of Designer Bookbinders (F.D.B.), one of only 21 people in the world who can claim such a title. Before coming to Colonial Williamsburg, he bound books for collectors, heads of state and royalty—including the guest book for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. Myall also started out in the “real world” as a saddle maker. He was invited to Colonial Williamsburg to teach the intricate steps of making an English saddle. “On my first day I was told, ‘You're working here now.'” Cloyed and Boag became interested in their trades in high school and college. Cloyed has a vivid memory of taking shelter from the rain in the silversmith's shop during a school field trip to Colonial Williamsburg. “There are lots of silversmiths, but it is hard to find ones willing to learn the trade in a fishbowl,” he says. “Essentially, the apprentices are training in front of the public.” Boag was interested in historic sites and trades when he was in college, later worked in a gristmill in Maryland, then networked his way to Colonial Williamsburg through tradesmen he met at museum events and conferences. Backgrounds vary, but the passion for their work doesn't. “You eat, sleep and breathe this work,” asserts Boag. “You can get demoralized if you're not passionate about it—like when you're planing boards on a 97-degree August day and think, ‘This could be done by machine.'” “It's not just bookbinding,” Plumley declares. “It's artistry.” Silversmith Cloyed is energized to push himself: “The real challenge is figuring out how to make something you've never made before.” “To sit and stitch six hours doesn't bother me at all,” Myall states. “Colonial Williamsburg allows me to work the way I like, by hand. It would be impossible to work in the outside world this way. It's one of the best jobs I've ever had in my life.” Although Newport Beach, California-based writer Mary Ann Hemphill lived in Williamsburg for six years, she never learned how to bind a book or stitch a saddle.
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