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08/26/2010 |
 There are a lot of good books on woodworking out there. Some old some new. After the success last year of The Joiner and Cabinet Maker I realized that it would be fun to reprint other books in my collection that deserve a wider audience and are not generally available. Paul Hasluck's "Carpentry and Joinery Illustrated" is the finest book ever written on architectural woodworking. Written in 1907, the height of fancy house building, it contains 1800 drawings and detailed instructions on everything house related. From step by step instructions on laying out a simple sash window on a story stick to making single, double, and triple hung windows, wainscoting, doors of all complexity. This is a book designed to teach a turn of the century joiner how to master the nuances of the craft. I cannot imagine anyone who is serious about traditional home building, either as a restorer, architectural woodworker, or architect not having this book. We are very proud to bring it back in a soft cover edition.
As a real bonus my friend Roy Underhill graciously volunteered to write a new introduction for the book.
The book has over 1800 engraving and the original had a dozen colored plates which sadly we could not afford to reproduce in color without making the book prohibitively expensive. However thanks to the miracle of the Internet we are posting a PDF of the color plates HERE. This will also give you a flavor of some of the complexity and general wonderfulness of the detailed illustrations that are all over the book.
Click here for a snippet of the contents.
We should have copies in a couple of weeks - you can pre-order the book here.
About the cover. Some folks think that a facsimile should also reproduce the original cover. I have no objection to this but think it depends on the context. The original cover for this book was brown, not fancy, and embossed. The design just doesn't work in the glossy context of a modern cover. The other thing is that this book is relevant and important now and it's not supposed to be an historic relic.
Note: This book will be the first publication of our new library imprint "Brooklyn Tool And Craft Books" this year we will also have other titles out including Bernard Jones's "The Complete Woodworker" - which is one of the best books on learning hand tool usage ever and is no longer in print.
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Jones' title was reprinted in 1998 by Ten Speed Press, so I was surprised to see this as your next project (and then I see that it is out of print, so I guess...). Was 1917 (date of my copy) the only edition of this work in Hasluck's time?
thanks for the words of encouragement. Peter - I don't have a copy of the extra 24 plates and since they are in color we probably could not afford to print them anyway. If you have them would you let me post a PDF for free download (like we did with the other 12 plates?)
joel
Peter
Joel, if you have back issues of Work, you might be able to match up the plates with the articles?
Gary