The placement, where I go on Fridays, is in a small, two person upholstery shop in a village called Nettlebed. The main person I learn from is Greg, a very relaxed person and perfect teacher for me. He knows both English and French techniques. I'm working on a reproduction piece of Louis XV furniture for my first piece. It is gilt but the client doesn't want it regilt, just cleaned. So far I have stripped the old upholstery and have gotten it webbed and sprung and ready
for making the hair pad next Friday. Work is leisurely and stressfree---I am offered tea at least four times during the day, which is too much even for me. So far, the placement seems absolutely perfect. The things I've learned so far are things that I knew how to do but not perfectly, and without knowing the physical principles and goals of each step. AHHHHH!
Back in the lab, I've been learning all sorts of things. Last week, we had a very interesting lecture on shellac by Campbell, my main tutor. He's a wonderful lecturer, very theatrical. Shellac is not made of ground up shells of bugs. It is the dried sweat of the tiny lac insect, a bug that lives on twigs on certain fruit trees in India. The female lays 200-600 eggs on the twig; the larvae hatch out and, feeling peckish, eat her entire body. The lac bug is the size of the head of a pin. As the bugs grow, swarming all over the twig and sucking out sap, they exude a resinous business that hardens and forms a protective sausage-shaped cocoon the whole length of the twig. When the life cycle is over, the twigs are harvested, the shellac removed from the twigs by women sitting in a circle on the ground, then it is broken up, sifted into little pebbles, placed in long cotton tubes and heated over a fire, and the shellac melts and drips out onto a stone,
where is cools in little puddles called buttons. It is then further melted into a sheet the size of a bed, then lifted by a man who pulls and stretches it until its thin as a membrane, then it's allowed to fall and break into bits. Now it is ready for export. Egads. We then grind it up, mix it with linseed oil, and heat it for use. it is a totally unreproduceable substance by man, and is used in papermaking, computer chips (it's a superb insulator for wires), and a hundred different things.I have started my first project, two footstools. I had to first strip off all the paint and bronzing powder, which took an entire day! Breathing in toxic stripper all day.... They are missing their feet so I will have to research what kind of feet would be appropriate, and then make them. Then I have to gild them, and clean the upholstery. I am very curious about gilding, particularly whether I will like doing it. If I do like it, there's good money to be made back home, where gilding is not an everyday skill.
This is my plane: I have spent two hours cleaning it, and two-and-a-half hours sharpening the blade!
Here I am making mortises for the back feet of the ladderback chair. The ladders will fit into the mortises.
I have to laugh a little at the English habit of having tea during school hours--since the labs have to be kept perfectly clean, everything has to cleaned in order to have tea, which happens at 10:30, takes half an hour to make, drink, and eat biscuits or cake, then lunch at 12:30-1:30, then another tea at 3:00-3:30, with more biscuits, then end the day at 5:00. And half the time he wants us to stay on until 6:00. Is it very American of me to wish that we could skip the tea breaks and get done a little earlier? Well, no, as it turns out, since my Greek and Spanish classmates are also feeling over-tea'd (new word).At this moment I am sitting in the back bedroom (Bruce's office), looking out on the back yard, which is long and skinny and joined to the neighbors back yard, with a pretty vista of the hills. Periodically a person or two comes along the field, often with a dog. My goal today is to have a good tromp along this field road, to see what everyone else is seeing. We probably need to go into High Wycombe and get some Wellies. We have numerous bedrooms and would love visitors. It's not a huge house, but it would easily accomodate four visitors. The village of Lane End has three pubs and a really good Indian restaurant. The other eveing we heard the church bells being rung, for practice? for about an hour. Rather magical. Much love to all, Ellie
P.S. Our address is:
7 Ditchfield Cottages
Ditchfield Common
Church Road
Lane End
Buckinghamshire HP14 3HJ
P.P.S. -- please email me anytime at ellie@together.net , and I'll try to answer!
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