Wood turning and carving

We've been talking about hand wood working with our township bicentennial. The common folk had to know how to make a bowl with an adze (no power equipment), make pegs to hold their barns together, etc. In the winter months when they weren't working on the necessities of life, some of them did do some carving - toys, puzzles, etc.

You might find some useful resources if you check on pioneer crafts in the Americas. Puma

I don't know...

if it will help, having not yet ordered it from the library, but there is a book by Daniel Defoe, printed in 1726 and reprinted in 1970 in the USA by Burt Fanklin, called 'The Complete English Tradesman' which is recommended to me as having information about some women silversmiths I'm writing about.

The well off would not buy treen and wooden trinkets as that was poor man's wares. They would employ someone to do lovely carving in their house. I think there might be 17thC prejudice against a woman doing carving work in a church, but not buying her work and bringing it into the church. I think that free form wooden sculpture is modern.

Have a look at Dorothy Hartley's books: 'Made in England' and 'A Countryman's England' where she looks at the old ways of working/making crafts. The sapling bent down to make a lathe was effective and swift. There's a group do it near me at the annual Victorian Country Fair and turn bowls and knobs etc with speed and craft!

17thC, and probably 18thC, wood carvers usually travelled from area to area finding work, like the stone carvers did.

You'd have to find a very compelling reason for her to carve, and a good reason why a woman would do that when, in those centuries, she had very definite work to do as a woman.

Google Hester Bateman

I'm currently reading The Female Shipwright, the autobiography of Mary Lacy, aka William Chandler, who went to sea in the mid 18th century disguised as a boy, and who subsequently served a full apprenticeship as a shipwright in the Royal dockyards, later receiving a pension in her own name as Mary Lacy and building a row of houses, some still standing, in Deptford.

Waylander!

Stop giving away my precious characters for my next novel!

I have some more references for my research and apparently 'The Making of the English Middle Class, 1660-1730' by Peter Earle gives evidence that one third of all women of property in London were running a business.

It din't take a lot of strength to do things before steam. If yu want to actually watch a man who still does everything the old-fashioned way, this site is a good one.
http://www.pbs.org/woodwrightsshop/video/2900/2901.html

I have...

a few more references found in a book's bibliography. Would you like them? PM if you do.