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During recent years Chinese furniture
pieces have become highly prized collector items. Almost all
reputable museums around the world have at least a few pieces of
Chinese “Ming” furniture in their collection. At the same time
historians appear to focus their interests not only on the finished
product but increasingly more on the ways in which these products
were built. Together with a thriving tool collector community this
has invigorated the interest in old tools in general and woodworking
tools in specific. Surprisingly recent interest in Chinese furniture has not triggered this kind on interest in traditional Chinese woodworking tools. In fact, very little is known about Chinese woodworking tools. There seems to be little doubt that Chinese craftsmen have produced some of the must sophisticated pieces of furniture ever built but little do we know about the ways, means and tools of the traditional woodworker in China. Tang and Ming dynasty furniture is highly regarded as the pinnacle of furniture making and at the same time Chinese tools are generally considered low quality if not flat out junk. One goal of The Chinese Historical Society of America is to document the influence that Chinese immigrants had on American history (see box on right). The museum hosts a wealth of information on a chapter of little known American history, spots a few pieces of furniture and displays some rather unique woodworking tools.
The Chinese Historical Society of America is housed in the 1932 building of the Chinatown YWCA, designed by architect Julia Morgan. When entering the museum the visitor immediately notices a few pieces of traditional Chinese furniture. These items were original to the building’s use as the Chinatown YWCA, and are now retained in the collection of the CHSA. Two samples are shown in Figure 1. As early as Tang dynasty, Chinese woodworkers had perfected wood joinery and were able to produce furniture that was built completely without glue. The pieces of furniture clearly show traditional Chinese joinery and style. Typical for the Chinese style are the use of hardwoods, the lack of turned pieces and the use of sophisticated wood joints (Figure 2). For the untrained eye Chinese joinery appears to consist of simple miter joints. Even Western master woodworkers routinely fail to recognize the ingenuity of Chinese self-locking joinery. The table aprons lock the table legs in place via mitered tenon joints (sometimes in combination with hidden dove tails); the legs securely lock the table surface in place via double mortise and tenon joints. The table surface is usually a framed panel where the frame is held together via tenoned miter joints. One particular challenge in building
furniture without glue is to edge joint long boards. Chinese
craftsmen have invented a simple and ingenious
Chinese cabinet makers had a clear preference for hardwood. Many varieties of native and imported rosewood were used. Scholars of Chinese furniture seem to disagree what exact kind of wood (or types of woods) e.g. Hua-li represents. In general the wood that was used by Chinese furniture makers is described as very hard and very heavy. Clearly the use of such wood together with the need for exceedingly complicated joinery must have been very demanding on both the skills of the woodworker and the tools used to produce the furniture. It is rather surprising how little is known about traditional Chinese woodworking tools. Fortunately, the CHSA displays two unique examples of traditional Chinese tools: a large coffin shaped wooden plane and a molding plane. Many of the features that I believed to be Chinese (removable cross bar, triangular shaped top) are missing from the large plane. The plane (Figure 4) appears to be made of a single piece of rosewood.
The plane is approx. 300mm (12”) long and has rounded sides that remotely resembles a coffin plane. In discussion with Dr. Anna Naruta (CHSA’s Collections Department) I learned that this is an herb plane. According to Prof. H. Huang (Purdue University) Chinese herb planes are commonly used in Traditional Chinese medicine to cut herbs (like dried roots, herbal tree branches, etc.) into small chips. He herb plane sits on top of an herb shop workbench as part of the exhibit’s section about Chinatown herb shops. The plane has a very unusual metal wear strip at the leading edge of the mouth as shown in Figure 5.
This wear strip is wedged into the plane via two types of wood (one of which could be bamboo). The wear strip also protrudes over the sides of the plane. There is no indication if this wear strip is original or has been added later when the mouth was enlarged during usage. The blade is fixed to the plane via a wooden cross bar (Figure 6). As typical for Chinese planes the mouth opening is close to the center of the plane body. No barrier separates visitors from the herb plane, and unfortunately this has lead to various scuff marks.
A blade that appears to be matching
this plane is shown in a separate display case. The blade has a very
slight crown as shown in Figure 7.
Blade thickness is far from constant however the back seems to be somewhat flattened. Assuming that this is the matching blade for the herb plane described above, this should give a plane with an extremely fine mouth. Not a big surprise since this plane was used to slice thin shavings off roots, etc. A Chinese molding plane, shown (Figure 8), is currently on display as part of an exhibit commemorating the centennial of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire. It appears that the iron in shape of a round does not match the profile of the plane body very well (45 degree chamfer, see Figure 9). In addition it appears that the blade is mounted into the body bevel up, and should make this molding plane into a scraper plane. Moreover the plane blade appears to be ground out of a chisel. The description to this plane states that this plane was used in 1880 in constructing the Shang Git Company’s building. Assuming this plane has actually been used for daily production work then this is a great example of ingenuity in a resource limited environment.
If for whatever reason the original blade was lost (or maybe just of inferior quality) and assuming a spare chisel was available one can easily see how a contractor of the Shang Git company was able to continue work after regrinding his chisel. The description to this plane states that this plane was used in 1880 in constructing the Shang Git Company’s building. Assuming this plane has actually been used for daily production work then this is a great example of ingenuity in a resource limited environment. If for whatever reason the original blade was lost (or maybe just of inferior quality) and assuming a spare chisel was available one can easily see how a contractor of the Shang Git company was able to continue work after regrinding his chisel.
Building the American West was a resource limited enterprise and triggered numerous inventions. Very little known is the contribution of Chinese inventors to the American society during the late 19th century. The museum documents specific examples of such inventions. Two examples where entrepreneurship and ingenuity helped to overcome great obstacles are related to food production in California. Seafood is an important part of Chinese diet and Chinese people have developed a highly sophisticated culture hinged around sea food, fishing, food preparation and processing. It is of little surprise that around 1870 Chinese fishing boats called sampans were common sight along the California coast. The boat exhibited in the Chinese of America collection is from China Camp, Marin County, California, and dates no later than 1870. It is believed to be the only surviving example of a thriving fleet of Chinese fishing boats in California (Figure 10). According to the exhibit the boat goes back to a design that is at least 18 centuries old.
Separating dried shrimp meat form its shell has been an extremely labor intensive process until Chinese immigrants came up with the idea to use grain fans to accomplish this goal.
Chinese farmers have used grain fans
since at least the Han Dynasty (202 BC to 220 AD). According to the
museum’s displays it must have been a common sight to find Chinese
grain fans in California shrimp camps. These grain fans were wooden
machines, two are on display in the museum, see Figure 11. The Chinese Historical Society of America shows a rather unknown (but highly important) part of American History. The exhibit includes a few interesting woodworking tools that shows a line of old American tools that up to date have not found much attention in tool collector circles. Located in San Francisco’s China Town it is worth a trip for anybody interested in American History. ©2006, Christoph J. Scholz, unless indicated otherwise. Photos taken with permission of CHSA. Contact CHSA to request permission to reproduce in any medium. |
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way
to solve this problem. The use of dovetailed clamps prevents edge
joints from opening without sacrificing stability. In fact this
construction stabilizes the whole piece of furniture and is an
efficient way to prevent racking without sacrificing the aesthetic
appearance of the piece. As always, it can be instructive to turn
Chinese furniture upside down to gain deeper insight into the
construction as shown in Figure 3.
