`Handmade” is never just that. The hands that shape a sculpture, sew a quilt, craft a cabinet invariably hold tools.
Since earliest times, at first pounding or cutting with stones that nestled comfortably into the palm, humans have made tools their partner, their enabler. It is tools that put mankind atop the food chain, the means by which our species stretches toward the boundless reach of its imagination.
“And,” Richard Chapman said of tools, “they’re just kinda neat.”
Chapman is organizer of the sixth annual Antique Tool Show and Sale to be held Sunday at Garfield Farm Museum near west suburban Geneva. He sat at the dining room table in his home on Chicago’s North Side, some of his collection of antique tools spread out in front of him. As he talked, Chapman, 68, ran his large hands over a beautiful boxwood plane, a wooden brace (drill) with brass inlays, an oak bow saw topped by lovingly carved swan heads.
These were some of the gems he has unearthed at house sales and swap meets and antique shops, jewels sometimes lurking at the bottom of old tool boxes otherwise full of grimy, rusted stuff.
He has bought some of those other tools, too, neither rare nor lovely, but just “something I found and felt sorry for.”
Chapman takes them home and cleans them up just enough to remove corrosion and grime, then puts on a protective coat of wax. Purists leave the dirt in place, as it can be an indication of how the hands were placed and, thus, exactly how the tool was used.
Until around World War II, tools were owned mainly by professionals — coopers, lumbermen, tinsmiths, coachmakers, leatherworkers, machinists, wheelwrights and shipwrights. They were made to be sturdy and precise instruments. Then came the rise of the home handyman. To meet that growing market, manufacturers offered cheaper, less well-made products signaling what tool collectors see as the beginning of a general decline in quality.
Also, power tools came along, tools drawing energy from something other than human muscle, and the relationship between man and tool changed.
“I sometimes use hand tools as a metaphor in lectures about the concept of otherness,” said Georgetown University assistant professor of theology Vincent Miller. “Do you subdue the wood with some kind of power tool or do you take a fine finishing plane and dance with the wood?”
Miller is a collector and user. “Old tools give a much more direct contact with the wood,” he said. “That contact seems attractive in a world that has become mediation upon mediation.”
He sees the facination with old tools as a combination of nostalgia and true respect for the past, for “lost crafts and a time when one could spend a lifetime developing skills, when `master’ meant something — among other things, job security.”
Now, he noted, mechanical means are available to achieve near perfect results with ease. Thus, master craftsmen faced something akin to the “rapid collapse of (realism) in painting once photography became available. The baroque ideal of virtuoso realism doesn’t capture the imagination in an age of mechanical reproduction.”
Antique tool enthusiasts range from those who buy and sell and perhaps make some money in the process to those whose interest is more in the history of the tool than the thing itself: How does this tool fit in the progression of technology, who made it, where did the maker come from, who were the maker’s apprentices?
Sunday’s show and sale also features a joint meeting of the Early American Industries Association and the Midwest Tool Collectors Association. The former group was founded in 1933 with a primarily academic focus. The more recent (1968), more collector-oriented Midwest Tool Collectors Association began as an affiliate of the EAIA.
The gathering, which last year drew around 180 members and some 250 laity, is a chance to see guys wearing T-shirts proclaiming “No Tool Like an Old Tool,” and “Old Tools Feel Better.” These are guys who likely have read books with titles such as “A History of the Logarithmic Slide Rule and Allied Instruments,” “The American Patented Brace,” and “The Axe and Man.”
Although Chapman said that the women’s auxiliary will likely do a demonstration of old-fashioned washing machines and kitchen devices, tool collecting is almost entirely a guy thing, and wives, like his Pat, more endure the hobby than wallow in it.
“I have a friend,” Chapman noted, conjuring up a woman’s living nightmare, “who has 700 planes.”
A love of old tools seems often to be something passed from one generation to another. Chapman’s facination with tools (like Miller’s) traces back to his grandfather — in Chapman’s case, a gentleman named Pete Kable, who had a farm near Platteville, Wis., and was way ahead of his time.
“He had 32 glass jars with metal plates in them hooked up to a generator. They would act like storage batteries and supply electricity to the house and barn,” Chapman said. “He had a Montgomery Ward radio, a refrigerator. He was a beekeeper. He made maple syrup in the spring and sorghum in the fall. I loved to go there to visit. We’d fix things together. Afterward, we’d put his tools away and sit in the basement on sacks of chicken mash. He’d lean up against the water heater, and we’d talk and talk. He’s been gone a lot of years and I still miss him.”
Much of what will be seen at the show will be woodworking tools, though there likely will also be machine tools, farm implements, etc. A “What Is It?” table will hold any tools that owners — both members of the association and other folks who are not — can’t identify. Past “What Is It?” tables have yielded such curiosities as a spear that looked like it might have been used for fishing but was identified as a device used to pick up bundles of tobacco.
Chapman seldom uses the tools he collects. He noted that the wood of the past was better, clearer material, easier to work with old-fashioned tools. “Now,” he said, “It’s easier just to grab a router.”
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Garfield Farm, an 1840s-vintage farm and inn undergoing restoration as a working historical farm, is located 5 miles west of Geneva, off Illinois Highway 38 on Garfield Road. Hours of the Aug. 2 show, to be preceded by an early-morning membership meeting, are 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. for the general public, which may stay later to enjoy the farm and tour the 1846 inn. A $5 donation is asked of adults, $2 for children 12 and under. Call 630-584-8485.
