Book 87

of Cutler's Castle Hill Works. (_Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum._)]

[Illustration: Figure 39.--18TH CENTURY: THE TRANSITIONAL FORM of the wooden brace and bit incorporated the overall shape of the mass-produced version but retained the archaic method of fastening the bit to the chuck. The tool is of Dutch origin and suggests the influence of Sheffield design on European tools. (Smithsonian photo 49792-E.)]

[Illustration: Figure 40.--1769: ROUBO ILLUSTRATED THE METALLIC BRACE and, in addition, suggested its use as a screwdriver. (André-Jacob Roubo, _L'Art du menuisier_,1769.)]

[Illustration: Figure 41.--ABOUT 1775: FORD, WHITMORE AND BRUNTON made and sold clockmaker's braces of metal with a sweep and shank that was imitated by American patentees in the 19th century. (Catalogue of Ford, Whitmore and Brunton, Birmingham, England. _Courtesy of the Birmingham Reference Library._)]

[Illustration: Figure 42.--1852: NEARLY ONE HUNDRED YEARS after Roubo's plate appeared, Jacob Switzer applied for a patent for an "Improved Self Holding Screw Driver." The similarity of Switzer's drawing and Roubo's plate is striking. (Original patent drawing 9,457, U.S. Patent Office, Record Group 241, the National Archives.)]

[Illustration: Figure 43.--1866: THE SIMPLICITY AND STRENGTH of the brace proposed by J. Parker Gordon is in sharp contrast to the heavily splinted sides of the wooden brace commonly used in mid-19th-century America. (Original patent drawing 52,042, U.S. Patent Office, Record Group 241, the National Archives.)]

[Illustration: Figure 44.--1865: MILTON NOBLES' PATENT perfecting the chuck which held the auger bit was an important step along the path which led ultimately to the complete acceptance of the metallic brace. Barber's ratchet brace shown in figure 66 completes the metamorphosis of this tool form in the United States. (Original patent drawing 51,660, U.S. Patent Office, Record Group 241, the National Archives.)]

The carpenter's brace is another instance of divergent design after a common origin. Refer again to Van Vliet's etching of the woodworker's shop (fig. 28), to the detail from Moxon (fig. 36), and from Roubo (fig. 37). All show the brace in a form familiar since the Middle Ages, a shape common to both delineators and craftsmen of the Continent and the British Isles. But, as the plane changed, so changed the brace. The standard form of this tool as it was used and produced in the United States in the 19th century can be seen in another plate from the catalogue of the Castle Hill Works at Sheffield (fig. 38). This English influence on American tool design is no surprise, since as early as 1634 William Wood in _New England's Prospect_ suggested that colonists take to the New World "All manner of Ironwares, as all manner of nailes for houses ... with Axes both broad and pitching ... All manners of Augers, piercing bits, Whip-saws, Two handed saws, Froes ..., rings for Bettle heads, and Iron-wedges."

[Illustration: Figure 45.--19TH CENTURY: THE UPHOLSTERER'S HAMMER is an unknown; it is not dated, its maker is anonymous, as is its user. It is of American origin, yet of a style that might have been used in England or on the Continent. This lack of provenance need not detract from its significance as a material survival. This hammer, the brace (fig. 46), the bevel (fig. 47), and the compass saw (fig. 48) are sufficiently provocative in their design to conjure some image of a technology dependent upon the skilled hand of craftsmen working in wood and of the relationship between the hand, the tool, and the finished product. (Smithsonian photo 49793-A.)]

[Illustration: Figure 46.--18TH CENTURY: THE BRACE AND BIT in its nonfactory form conforms to a general design pattern in which none of the components are ever precisely alike. This aspect of variety of detail--sophistication, crudeness, decorative qualities or the like--reflects something of the individuality of the toolmaker, a quality completely lost in the standardization of the carpenter's brace. (Smithsonian photo 49794-A.)]

English tool design in the 18th century also influenced the continental toolmakers. This can be seen in figure 39 in a transitional-type bitstock (accession 319556) from the Low Countries. Adopting an English shape, but still preserving the ancient lever device for holding the bit in place, the piece with its grapevine embellishment is a marked contrast to the severely functional brass chucks on braces of English manufacture. No less a contrast are metallic versions of the brace. These begin to appear with some regularity in the U.S. patent specifications of the 1840's; their design is apparently derived from 18th-century precedents. Roubo (fig. 40) illustrated a metal bitstock in 1769, as did Ford, Whitmore & Brunton, makers of jewelers' and watchmakers' tools, of Birmingham, England, in their trade catalogue of 1775 (fig. 41). Each suggests a prototype of the patented forms of the 1840's. For example, in 1852, Jacob Switzer of Basil, Ohio, suggested, as had Roubo a hundred years earlier, that the bitstock be used as a screwdriver (fig. 42); but far more interesting than Switzer's idea was his delineation of the brace itself, which he described as "an ordinary brace and bit stock" (U.S. pat. 9,457). The inference is that such a tool form was already a familiar one among the woodworking trades in the United States. Disregarding the screwdriver attachment, which is not without merit, Switzer's stock represents an accurate rendering of what was then a well-known form if not as yet a rival of the older wooden brace. Likewise, J. Parker Gordon's patent 52,042 of 1866 exemplifies the strengthening of a basic tool by the use of iron (fig. 43) and, as a result, the achievement of an even greater functionalism in design. The complete break with the medieval, however, is seen in a drawing submitted to the Commissioner of Patents in 1865 (pat. 51,660) by Milton V. Nobles of Rochester, New York.[9] Nobles' creation was of thoroughly modern design and appearance in which, unlike earlier types, the bit was held in place by a solid socket, split sleeve, and a tightening ring (fig. 44). In three centuries, three distinct design changes occurred in the carpenter's brace. First, about 1750, the so-called English or Sheffield bitstock appeared. This was followed in the very early 19th century by the reinforced English type whose sides were splinted by brass strips. Not only had the medieval form largely disappeared by the end of the 18th century, but so had the ancient lever-wedge method of fastening the bit in the stock, a device replaced by the pressure-spring button on the side of the chuck. Finally, in this evolution, came the metallic stock, not widely used in America until after the Civil War, that embodied in its design the influence of mass manufacture and in its several early versions all of the features of the modern brace and bit.

[Illustration: Figure 47.--18TH CENTURY: The visually pleasing qualities of walnut and brass provide a level of response to this joiner's bevel quite apart from its technical significance. (Private collection. Smithsonian photo 49793-B.)]

[Illustration: Figure 48.--18TH CENTURY: THE HANDLE OF THE COMPASS SAW, characteristically Dutch in shape, is an outstanding example of a recurring functional design, one which varied according to the hand of the sawer. (Smithsonian photo 49789-C.)]

Henry Ward Beecher, impressed by the growing sophistication of the toolmakers, described the hand tool in a most realistic and objective manner as an "extension of a man's hand." The antiquarian, attuned to more subjective and romantic appraisals, will find this hardly sufficient. Look at the upholsterer's hammer (accession 61.35) seen in figure 45: there is no question that it is a response to a demanding task that required an efficient and not too forceful extension of the workman's hand. But there is another response to this implement: namely, the admiration for an unknown toolmaker who combined in an elementary striking tool a hammerhead of well-weighted proportion to be wielded gently through the medium of an extremely delicate handle. In short, here is an object about whose provenance one need know very little in order to enjoy it aesthetically. In a like manner, the 18th-century bitstock of Flemish origin (fig. 46), the English cabinetmaker's bevel of the same century (fig. 47), and the compass saw (accession 61.52, fig. 48) capture in their basic design something beyond the functional extension of the craftsman's hand. The slow curve of the bitstock, never identical from one early example to another, is lost in later factory-made versions; so too, with the coming of cheap steel, does the combination of wood (walnut) and brass used in the cabinetmaker's bevel slowly disappear; and, finally, in the custom-fitted pistol-like grip of the saw, there is an identity, in feeling at least, between craftsman and tool never quite achieved in later mass-produced versions.

[Illustration: Figure 49.--EARLY 19TH CENTURY: THE DESIGNATION "GENTLEMAN'S TOOL CHEST" required a chest of "high-style" but necessitated no change in the tools it held. (