Doris M Holden - Writings
Transcripts, manuscript and published versions
The Romance of Wood
An Essay by Susan (Doris M Holden)
A competition entry, though I currently have not found any record of how this piece was viewed by the Timber Development Association.
The title of ‘the friend of man‘ has been given, from time to time, to both the horse and the dog, It might, with equal truth, be given to the tree. From earliest times the tree has offered to man food, warmth and shelter, and through every step of his progress it has borne him company. When the first men picked up a fallen branch with which to strike his prey he discovered a material which held infinite possibilities.
Much of our reconstruction of the past can only be conjectured, but we are fairly safe in assuming that the first use that man made of wood was as a weapon. Helpless as he was against the sharp teeth and claws of the fiercer animals, he would instinctively seek an ally and find it in the wooden club or lump of stone, an, before very long, his native ingenuity led him to combine the two materials. His flints, carefully chipped to a point, were bound by thongs of hide to a ‘slim sapling to form a spear or to a short strong billet to form an axe. We may almost be equally sure that it was not first man but first woman (always more concerned for the preserving of life than the taking of it), who first saw in wood the means of shelter. In the spear stuck in the ground she saw, not a weapon in idleness, but the support for a skin and the foundation of a tent-home.
We cannot tell what nameless discoverer first rubbed sticks or flints together and made a spark, but the coming of fire marks a very definite stage in man’s progress. Wood was the obvious material for the fire, and, with its coming, woman found the immense possibilities of cooking.
Slowly through the years the first arts and crafts arose and, in them all, wood played a major part. The pliability of the sapling led man to set traps for game with loops of hide, and from this evolved the bow. With his crude flint tools, he chipped and hacked at the wood, making pointed arrows, or shafts to bear a flint-head, that his weapon might conquer the handicap of speed. While typical early man, the fighter, laboured with his weapons, the exceptional man (the prophet that has in all ages seen a vision ahead of his time and pointed the way for the herd) twanged the string of hie bow into musical notes and, by adjusting the length of the taut sinews, made a crude harp to interpret his dreams.
Meanwhile the river dwellers were finding new possibilities in the tree. They watched the broken branches sweep by after a storm and saw how tho logs rode the water. To some, more daring than the rest, came the idea that thus they also might travel, and experiment end ducking taught them the art of balancing on a log with the aid of a rough peddle, Was it a man lazier than the rest who grew tired of trailing his feet in the water and began to chip away the top of his log that he might rest at ease? Perhaps it was only the need to find a safe place for bows and arrows that made the early man hollow out a cavity in the top of the log and then see, the further improvement in his own comfort and security. It is clear, however, that the dugout was the pioneer of shipping and that its construction goes back to the Stone Age. The dug-outs unearthed at Brigg and Sittingbourne show that both were made before metal was worked.
These dug-outs were at first steered with a paddle after the manner of a canoe, but, in an effort to reduce exertions, thongs of leather were made into rough rowlocks and the dug-out rowed by several men each taking an oar.
While the more adventurous experimented with early boats and in them went exploring up rivers and along the coasts, Finding (perhaps by accident, as so many of the greatest discoveries have been made), the propelling power of a skin stretched on a
pole and caught by the wind, the less daring were working at the domestic arts which the coming of fire had made possible. Pottery was being made, rough bowls and dishes being turned with a stick and the clay baked, and wood was being used for the making of implements of all sorts. It was found that hollowing out or dividing into lengths could be done by charring with fire and then chipping away with flint tools, and rough ploughs and weaving frames began to appear as the hunting people passed and the more nomadic and agricultural people took their place.
It is not possible to follow man through all his phases as the Stone Age passed into the Bronze, and the Bronze into the Iron. We can only stop to catch a glimpse here and there of the highlights in man's growing alliance with the tree. Again a nameless discoverer must be assumed - - the man who first made the wheel. We have no record of him, nor of the early attempts which followed his discovery, for our oldest written records and drawings find the wheeled vehicle already accepted. In ancient Egypt we find records of the chariot, a state vehicle made of wood and ornamented; in early Genesis we find Joseph, the honoured of the Egyptian, riding in a chariot, but sending the humbler wagon to fetch his father and the women and children of his family to Egypt.
Of this ‘wagon’ we have no description, but it must have been a heavy, cumbrous vehicle of wood, with wooden wheels, drawn possibly by oxen. As far as we can tell the ‘chariot’ was the chief wheeled vehicle of the early days, being used for war and as a special transport for kings and important people. They were usually of wood, with wooden wheels, but highly decorated with paintings or with gold overlaying. A very light racing chariot became popular later in Egypt. It was formed partly of wood and partly of bronze and reached a high peak of craftsmanship.
Here, in ancient Egypt, we see the first signs of furniture. Primitive man had bothered little with possessions, beyond his skins for bedding and his few pots and tools, his greatest attempt at furnishing being an occasional dug-out chest, but with the coming of cities and the dawn of civilization on the Nile, seats accompanied state chariots as signs of royalty and highly carved and decorated chairs and stools began to appear.
At the same time boat~building was forging ahead and ships with large sails and with many rowers piled up and down the Nile. As long ago as the IVth Dynasty ( about 3900 3600 B.C.), the Egyptians were building great ships of wood while in other parts of the world the primitive savage still wrestled with his Dug~out.
We must now turn to our own history. Leaving the wonderful civilizations of the past, it is with something of a shock that we realise that as late as the Middle Ages our ancestors were living lives not far removed from that of primitive man, Gathered in little huts of mud and timber, with earthen floors and bare of all furnishing, they clustered round the feudal lord in his strongly built but equally cheerless castle, tilling their fields with rude instruments and ignorant of all but the simplest crafts. It was a time of strife, of frequent internal struggles between feudal lords, a time when lack of transport and lack of roads made travelling unthinkable for the ordinary people, and the Inhabitants of a village might live and die without ever passing beyond their own boundaries. As late as the 13th century, we can trace little in the way of domestic possessions beyond the necessary household cooking and weaving implements and a chest dug out from a solid log for the holding of any treasures.
As the country settled down to more peaceful living and as domestic life improved, housekeeping articles increased and it became necessary to ‘cabin’ or enclose them, Thus we find the ancestor of the modern cabinet-maker in the first craftsmen who made these ‘cabins’ or containers. By the 15th century there was established a ‘Guild of Cofferers’ consisting of those. Craftsmen who specialised in constructing cheats, coffers or hutches, and for a long time the chest was the basis of all furniture. It served as cupboard, seat, table or bed and was the only accompaniment to the ‘board' - or planks on trestles- which made the long table at which all the members of a family with their soldiers and servants would sit down together, The memory of this still survives in the phrase ‘festive board’.
One can imagine that the manners of the rough soldiers were apt to be a little disconcerting at times and it was not long before the mistress of the castle wished to draw herself apart from them at meals, ‘This led to the breaking up of the general meal and the introduction of the ‘side-board', a side table on which the steward served, and the arranging of a special head table for the lord and his lady, flanked by two heavy wooden chairs. These were, for a long time, the only chairs and their use definitely an honour, setting tho occupiers above the herd who rested on stools or benches, a meaning preserved to-day in the expression ‘taking the chair,"
Meanwhile the cabin-makers were not idle. Though they were still producing solid chests for the storage of linen and clothing. they were also experimenting with new forms. Some placed two cabins one above the other and produced the first chest of drawers; others heightened the back and sides and made a shelf above, thus forming a cup board or shelf for cups. Others, remembering the shortage of chairs, raised back and sides a little above the lid end formed a settle or seat.
With the Renaissance came sweeping changes in domestic life and a new standard of luxury. No longer was the bare stone castle, with rush-strewn floor and the minimum of furniture considered suitable for the nobility, and the more comfortable manor house took its place, in which for the first time in this country the full decorative uses of wood were realised. No longer would it do to rough hew a log for table or chair, but careful and intricate carving was done, wooden panels hid the bare stone walls; gate-legged tables were set for the meal and carved chairs. The same taste for “serving was apparent in the churches of the period. With a loving care craftsmen coaxed their oak blocks into quaint heads and bodies, into scrolls and leaf-work, that the house of God might be as beautiful decorated as that of the king.
The next hundred years were definitely ones of progress in the art of wood-working, as furniture became more general. The bed ceased to be only a rough affair of rugs on a chest or the floor, and became an important piece of furniture. In many houses, the bedroom was the only private place and the bed provided a place for receiving visitors. It began to achieve a dignity of its own, became panelled, developed posts and curtains and a roof above it and was eventually an awe inspiring object.
Chairs no longer having to support the weight of a knight in armour, became light and graceful, By about 1650, caning was being used for seats and panels in the back, while legs might be highly carved, “The gate~legged table, because of its adaptability, became very popular and stools were frequent. It must not be assumed, however, that anything like the amount of furniture we use to-day was taken for granted chairs were definitely luxuries for the wealthy, and we have reason to think that in the case of nobles with town and country houses, only one set was afforded and taken to and fro as required. In Pepys" Diary, as late as 1669, we have a picture of the Duke of York and his friends in their country house, sitting on the carpet because there were no chairs ~ possibly because they were still in town.
Up to this time the main, almost the only wood used for all purposes was our English oak, but supplies were already becoming inadequate and it was clear that we must look further afield . The great forests of Europe Offered almost unlimited supplies and hewn logs of oak and pine began to come in from the Baltic countries. With the coming of William and Mary and the consequent Dutch influence, a new wood - walnut ~ became popular for furnishing but, being rare and expensive, it was usually veneered on yellow deal or oak.
England was now learning to go overseas for her materials and, by the opening of the Georgian period, mahogany was coming from America and Cuba. Its rich colour and high polish made it at once attractive and the fashion swung from walnut to the newcomer. With the change came the age of the great craftsmen, the makers of furniture whose names have become history ~ Chippendale, Gillow, Hepplewhite and Sheraton. The type of furniture each made was distinctive and definite schools of cabinet makers followed their lead, striving to achieve a perfection of line and finish which had not been dreamed of in the past. Chairs, tables, cupboards and beds will at once come to our minds as offering scope for the craftsmen, ‘but with these large pieces went also a minute perfection of detail which reached its highest pitch in the tea~caddies of the period.
Just as the lady of medieval times had demanded a chest for her treasures, so did the Georgian lady demand a choice casket for her tea, and when we remember that a pound of best Pekoe coat 45/-, might well be classed as a treasure. Infinite care went to the making of these little containers. Sometimes two inner boxes of silver, for black and green tea, would be enclosed in an outer box of inlaid mahogany with sliver fittings; later, rosewood was often used, with inlay of mother-of-pearl. Food was stepping into the place of honour as the material of dignity.
With the coming of the Victorian era, we must record an increased demand for furniture coupled with a decline in taste. But domestic requirements were but a small part of the sudden impetus in the use of wood. People were beginning to travel, lands and seas were being opened up, goods were circulating and in all these activities wood played a major part.
There has been little space to speak of the rise of the sailing-ship from that early dug-out with the stretched skin but its progress is one of the most romantic stories in history. The ‘quinqueremes of Nineveh' of which the poet sings, the triremes of Rome, with their great banks of wooden oars swung by slaves; the dragon painted, shield-hung galleys of the "Winged Hats’ swooping over the seas after their prey; the high-walled Spanish galleons that mastered the seas and the little heavy oak ships that went to fight them, gallant little sailing-ships in which Columbus discovered a new world and Cortez a new ocean, standing silent upon A peak in Darien - - all these lead on through the ages to the peaceful trading ships of the Victorian age. Now we find then, bringing a stream of goods to the ports of England from near and far, and, chief among them for beauty and speed, those still-famed clippers bringing my lady her Pekoe from China in a mad race round the Cape.
On land, too, the slow-going horse vehicles of the past wore giving place to speed; light carriages and coaches ran on the roads and the first strings of trucks and passenger coaches were beginning to steam along the railways. Wood, wood, wood, was the demand ~ wood for ships, for trucks, for trains; beams for sleepers, for platforms, for bridges; planks for flooring; choice woods for panelling. There began to pour into the country a steady stream of timber from across the sea, from the pine-forests of the Baltic and the far north, from the hardwood forests of America and from the tropical jungle of the new colonies. Wood for the many thousands of houses that were springing up in the new towns, for the factories and workshops, the schools and churches; wood for floors and window frames, for desks and pencils, for pews and pulpits, for weaving frame and spinning-machine ~ wood and iron in partnership, not in opposition. It was a time of immense development.
Then, suddenly, dawned the Age of Steel and, in a flash, stood as the most powerful opponent wood had ever met. The cumbrous iron steam-ships, which had scarcely been able to hold their own with the swift-winged clippers turned in a few years into slim, steel greyhounds; blocks of skyscrapers soared up on steel girders; the wooden cart and carriage were replaced by the metal-built motor car and lorry; fittings and fitments launched out in the new strong material. It made its way in the office and factory by reason of its fire-resisting properties and, simply by reason of its novelty, it appeared in the lounges of the rich in the shape of weirdly shaped furniture. The Steel Age had come, but had the Age of Wood passed? Let us look at to-day and see the part that wood still plays in our lives, a part not so conspicuous, not so obvious as in the days of Chippendale, but a part bigger than the craftsman of old ever dreamed.
It is easy to say “Let us look!" but our problem now is "Where shall we look?" The picture that stood for so many hundreds of years, the woodman with his axe, the craftsmen with
his few simple tools, has given place to a whirling cinema reel of machinery and we are dazzled by the hundred facets it shows of the great timber trade.
Let us look first at the forest. Here, as of old, is the woodsmen felling the forest giants, but no longer is he a pioneer of the backwoods, feeding the far off civilisation. Civilization is there at his elbow, the mill has sprung up in the forest itself and hardly has the tree fallen when it is devoured by the machine. Circular saws rush screaming through it and it emerges cleanly cut as planks and deals, boards and battens, all ready for the incessant demand of builders throughout the world. For the housing rush of the Industrial Revolution was as nothing to the housing rush of to-day In the big cities the social conscience has awakened and slums can no longer be ignored, In London, in Berlin, in Vienna great areas are being stripped of their dirty, shoddy property and blocks of clean, light well-fitted flats are going up. Steel is there, of course, but in partnership with wood and the many built-in fitments and cupboards sell for wood in larger quantities than aid the little houses of the past.
This is only a fraction of the demand on the forests. In the pine forests of Russia and Finland, and in many another country the (axe men are at work too, and again at their elbow are the mills at work. Here come the big butte of the giant trees, passing through the machine and emerging as beams. They are destined for railway sleepers, strong hearts of wood to withstand any wear, any weather. Here go the finer ones, eliding under the sews and knives and emerging as flooring, as doors, as window-frames, in a dozen forms.
Here is a machine, cutting smaller and yet smaller. What can it be that needs a sliver of wood so minute? Ah, now they are pouring out ~ match sticks by the million, waiting but for their tip to burst into flame for the fires and cigarettes of the world. Here, in England, and in other European countries, they will be finished and sorted, while steadily another machine slices the wafer-like strips of wood which will make their boxes.
Back in the forest, men are thinning the denser growths. What use are these slim thees? No good for cutting into boards, it is true, but their straight trunks will find a home beneath the
ground as pit~props or help to string the telegraph over the world,
Look what is happening in this mill. A nightmare machine this, surely, which snatches the logs, strips them, saws them and then casts then to steel teeth to be ground, chewed, bathed in chemicals and spewed forth as a nauseous mass. A wet, loathsome substance
certainly and no longer wood in its beauty, but strangely enough, such stuff as dreams are made on’, for, when the machines have finished their work, when the mass has been spread and dried, cleaned and treated, it will be the paper of our books and news sheets, it
may hold immortal lines of poetry, or bear the plan for a new world.
This is perhaps, the greatest miracle of our day that wood, ground to pulp and chemically treated, is capable of re-emerging in strange and beautiful forms. It gives us paper in
all its forms, the daily new beside our breakfast plate, the letter that accompanies it, the wrapping in which our bacon and eggs arrived from the shop.
More than that, it is giving to my lady a gift - greater than any chest or tea~caddy of gold. Those cardboard-like sheets of wood-pulp pouring into the docks day after day will be
transformed by a magic as wonderful as ever fairy godmother knew. Crushed and churned, bathed and re~bathed in chemicals, from the gummy masses that results will come spinning a gossamer thread so fine, so silky, that spider or silkworm might envy. Twirling it revolves on
the spindle, shimmering it flies in the weaver's shuttle, tinted with every hue of the rainbow -- the miracle of rayon. In every tempting shape it comes to my lady, offering her each article of her attire, from the sheer hose and silken vest which caress her skin to the rich texture of her evening gown.
Dazzled with this whirl of machinery, with the miracle of wood in strange forms it is natural to assume that the age of the craftsman is over, that the machine has relegated him to the past. This is very far from true. It is strange, but none the less true, that a demand for cheap, machine-made woodwork of all descriptions still goes hand in hand with a demand for more beauty of line and marking than was ever dreamed of in the past. The Victorian phase of decoration is over and men and women of taste are re-discover shear beauty of wood as wood, the joy of a plain, finely grained surface, free of trifling mouldings and scrolls.
Doors are freeing themselves from meaningless panels, and becoming perfectly plain, their beauty lying in the natural graining of the wood. Indoor furnishings - cupboards, sideboards, beds, are following the same trend, an insistence on clean line and beauty of surface, and a revival is in sight of panelling of walls, not, as of old, as an excuse for carving,but to form a smooth background to the room, A swing of the pendulum is revealed in the revival of the fashion of Queen Anne's day for stripped oak and a modern note in the suggestion of
stripped pine as an alternative.
Today we can drew on woods that were unknown to our ancestors. The simple oak and ash which made up the timber. of our fore-fathers is multiplied to an amazing extent. Over two
hundred woods are now known to commerce, covering every variety of use, from the strong teak of ship-building to the brittle soft-wood of our firelighters; from the mahogany and rosewood of the drawing room to the pine of the kitchen floor; from the sweet smelling cedar
of our pencils to the bitter quassia of the chemist; from the logwood that dyes our mourning to the sandalwood that smokes as the Chinaman's Joss stick, All these and a hundred more have found their way into industry. Regarded at first with suspicion, they soon proved their individual worth and were accepted, and, as newer industries rise with their special demands, the right wood is ready to meet it.
Radio, emerging from the tiny ‘cats whisker’ stage, has definitely decided to dwell in a wooden cabinet, and much craftsmanship is going into the preparation of these. The aeroplane has made its demands and has found, in an Indian timber, the silver greywood, a heat-resisting and suitable timber for its propeller.
The motoring habit has made the country cottage or seaside bungalow a desired possession and experiments with cedar are proving that both durability and suitable rural effect can be produced by the timber house. The insistence on hygiene, which is so much a part of the present age, demands that all food shall be wrapped or packeted, with a consequent immense demand for spruce and pine, the paper producing woods.
There is, though, another side to this machine age which must not be overlooked for, though small, it is of immense significance.” The present age is one of displacement and every country is bearing a burden of ‘unemployed’ or men superseded by the machine. The problem of unwanted leisure has given rise to a return to the old handicrafts and among them, wood-working is to the fore. The almost forgotten art of bowl-turning is reviving and since turned and polished bowls have become a fashion in certain circles, there is a steady demand for them, and they are appearing on dining~-tables as containers of bread, of fruit, of salt. Hand-made furniture is appearing again. The product of leisure and it is possible that, as working-hours decrease and men find time hanging on their hands that more and more
Hand work will be done for the joy of creating, where machine-tending offers no scope.
So we look to the future confident that real craftsmanship will not die out and that wood will still, by its own beauty and adaptability, hold its place of honour. But we must not let ourselves be deluded by the false confidence of the past. The forest is not like the sea, nor do trees multiply as fish. The greed and shortsightedness of the past has resulted in a ruthless clearing of forest land, with disastrous results. Woodland exposed to sun and wind, has returned to desert; farms, robbed of their protection, have been scoured by dust-storms; climate has been affected and, in many Cases, a real timber shortage has become apparent. To our generation is entrusted the task of re-planting for the future. We have, in this country, already formed a Department of Woods and Forests and all over the country are being set plantations of tiny trees, the nurseries for the woods of tomorrow, America, alarmed at the terrible consequences of her ruthless destruction is planning a vast scheme of timber belts across the country, acting not only as stores for the future but as wind~breaks and moisture-conservors for the agricultural lands in between.
If man can remain at peace to carry out his schemes of re~planting and planning ahead, the future of timber will be safe. Another world-war, with its futile smashing and penniless aftermath would herald a great shortage, an age when a tree might literally be ‘worth its weight in gold.‘ Let us appreciate it now, our friend the tree, and plant it for our children, remembering, as Joyce Kilner sang:
"Poems are made by fools like me -
But only God can make a tree.”
The Timber Development Association and some information on the background to this competition is included in this article by Alan Powers. Unfortunately it doesnt tell us the winner of the Essay competition!
Part 2: Timber Constructed: Expanded Cultural Exchanges A Popular Modernism? Timber Architecture in Britain 1936–39
Alan Powers
Architectural Theory Review
Volume 25, 2021 - Issue 1-2, Pages 245-266 | Published online: 23 Nov 2021
The competition guidelines:
The original submitted manuscript:
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