Ancient Methods Same As Today
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- This topic has 9 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 9 months ago by Steve Giles.
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23 May 2016 at 9:25 pm #137380
Last week while vacationing in Paris, I went to the Louvre museum and saw some OLD furniture. I don’t mean 18th or 17th century, I mean the 15th century B.C. One of the pieces was from ancient Egypt and was made about 3500 years ago. The remarkable thing is that the chair design is very similar to the Paul Sellers dining chair. Upper and lower seat rails joined to legs with M&T. Rear legs extending higher to create the backrest. The joinery techniques are basically the same as those used today by us (not by Ikea or other mass makers). Sometimes I think of our craft as having been perfected through the last few centuries. But clearly it goes back so much farther. Imagine making this chair with the tools available at the time. Keep in mind this was the age of bronze – no hardened steel or even iron.
I blogged about it here (https://tinyshopww.blogspot.com/) if you care to read a little more about it. It’s the entry for May 21.
p.s. I’m having problems adding photos and captions. Hope you can see them. Some captions may be with the wrong photo, but you’ll get the jist.
- This topic was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Matt McGrane.
- This topic was modified 7 years, 11 months ago by Matt McGrane. Reason: Problems uploading photos and adding captions
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You must be logged in to view attached files.24 May 2016 at 5:41 pm #137402@ed – Ed, is that “I shouldn’t crack jokes” or “I shouldn’t joke about cracks”?
@pnj2411 – There was no indication (that I saw) about the wood species. It’s a good point about the seat rail vertical dimension. But a full set (front, back, and both sides) of upper and lower seat rails probably helps there. The information card was in French and the Google translation wasn’t really clear, but it might have meant that the chair spent centuries in a tomb with some bigwig, so not too much abuse. If you know French well, would you be willing to look at my blog entry (the link to the blog is above and there’s a picture of the French info card) and tell me if there is a better translation than what I got from Google?Certainly:
[Left card]
Chair
Qurnet Murai, western cemetery, wood and straw[Middle Card]
Items mostly from the western cemetery of Qurnet Murai (opposite Deir el-Medinch). Middle of the 18th dynasty (about 1,450 BC), a period when they still placed furniture that had really been used into tombs.[Right Card]
Storage basket
Qurnet Murai, western cemetery, esparto [Stipa tenacisissima – had to look that one up!] and palm leavesSo it implies that the chair was a real, used example.
Maybe people were lighter then 🙂1 June 2016 at 10:36 pm #137550Thanks for sharing Matt, that was pretty cool. It would be interesting to see what tools they used back then.
Steve
2 June 2016 at 2:10 am #137557@smassiesr – I agree Steve, that would be fascinating. Until they build the time machine, I guess we’ll have to wonder. …
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