17th-century Carved Box

Peter Follansbee

July 23-27

Carved box by Peter Follansbee, white oak and white pine, 2008

Working entirely with traditional hand tools, participants make carved oak boxes with pine lids and bottoms in the 17th-century, New England style. With Peter’s expert guidance, students rive green wood directly from a log with wedges and mauls, hew and plane boards flat with hatchets and wooden-bodied planes, join the sides together with wooden pins using braces and spoon bits, attach the bottom with hand-wrought nails, and make wooden pintle hinges for the lids. 

Peter demonstrates techniques for laying out and carving low-relief, period designs using gouges, compasses, mallets, and awls. Following a few practice runs, students carve their own panels for the front and sides of their boxes, then move on to joinery and assembly. To complete their boxes, participants may choose to decorate their lids with edge molding and side notches. Finally, Peter discusses traditional finishes such as linseed oil tinted with pigments like iron oxide, lampblack, and ochre.

Peter Follansbee is the joiner at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, MA, a living history museum where he has researched and demonstrated 17th-century furniture making techniques since 1994. He writes for scholarly and popular magazines such as American Furniture (published by the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee WI), Popular Woodworking, and Antiques & Fine Art. He has lectured at Colonial Williamsburg and the Winterthur museum, and has appeared on Roy Underhill’s television show The Woodwright’s Shop. For more on Peter visit his blog at pfollansbee.wordpress.com.

Open to all.

Tuition: $695

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