The Craft of Industrial Pattern Making

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The Journal o Modern Crat Volume 4—Issue 1—March 2011, pp. 27–48

The Journal of Modern Craft

Volume 4—Issue 1

March 2011

pp. 27–48DOI:

10.2752/174967811X12949160069018

Reprints available directly rom the publishers

Photocopying permitted by licence only

© Berg 2011

The Craft of IndustrialPatternmaking

Sarah Fayen Scarlett

Sarah Fayen Scarlett is ormer curator at the Chipstone

Foundation, a private organization in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

that supports scholarship in American decorative arts.

Exhibitions she curated at the Milwaukee Art Museum

explored issues o crat and consumerism across media rom the seventeenth century to the present. Now pursuing a

doctorate at the University o Wisconsin—Madison, she is

investigating the historic domestic architecture and cultural

landscapes o industrial communities.

Abstract

Historians, critics, and artists have recently challenged the

popular perception that things made in industrial actories

and things made by hand exist at opposite ends o the

crat spectrum. This article locates the source o that

misconception in the mid-nineteenth century, and oers

the feld o industrial patternmaking as a provocative

example. Using period manuals, trade magazines, and

the rich collection and archive o an early twentieth-

century industrial pattern shop, this article considers

the relationships o patternmakers to their crat, their

products, and their co-workers to suggest more continuitywith crat traditions than might be expected. Serving as a

touchstone fgure is Charles Rohls, the well-known maker

o “Artistic Furniture,” who could only create his new

identity as a creative individual artisan in the model o the

Arts and Crats movement by denying his earlier career as

an industrial patternmaker and cast-iron stove designer.

Keywords: industrial production, Arts and Cratsmovement, Charles Rohls, embodied knowledge, labor

history.

When Charles Rohls (1853–1936) began making what he

called “Artistic Furniture,” around 1897, he purged rom

his public biography all mention o his work as an industrial



28 The Crat o Industrial Patternmaking Sarah Fayen Scarlett


patternmaker. He enjoyed great success

in his own day, and is still acclaimed as the

creator o some o the most imaginative

urniture in early twentieth-century America.

His oak chairs, desks, lighting xtures, and

other decorative items deed conventions

o orm and historical precedent, boasting

abstract silhouettes whose fuid organic

lines set them ar outside the mainstream

(Figure 1). Rohls made this unusualurniture in Bualo, New York, working

with a ew employees in a small shop just

as America’s Arts and Crats Movement

was burgeoning. But in his many published

interviews, he never mentioned that he had

learned everything he knew about wood

and tools as a young patternmaker in large

cast-iron stove actories around Manhattan.Despite spending twenty years in and out

o pattern shops, Rohls wrote that he “had

no knowledge o cabinetmaking” beore he

invented “The Rohls Style.”1

Rohls’ denial o his roots in industry

serves as the jumping o point or

this article, which presents the role o

patternmaking in late nineteenth-century iron oundries as a skilled enterprise. This

case study complicates received notions

o the relationship between handcrat and

industrial production. Patternmaking—the

shaping o wood into specied orms, which

were in turn used to make sand molds or

metal casting—was a traditional skill used

or thousands o years. By the nineteenthcentury, it was perormed using the same

tools and materials as other types o

woodworking and was becoming a vital

intermediate step in the replication o cast

metal objects. As the number and output o

American oundries expanded dramatically

in the second hal o the nineteenth century,

Fig 1 Charles Rohls (American, 1853–1936),

Hall Chair, 1904, Oak, 57 × 187/8 × 17 inches.

Milwaukee Art Museum, Git o American

Decorative Art 1900 Foundation in honor o

Glenn Adamson. Photo: Gavin Ashworth ©

American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation.



Sarah Fayen Scarlett The Crat o Industrial Patternmaking 29


Fig 2 Title page rom the catalog o Sherman S. Jewett Company, Bualo, New York,

1890. Rohls may have contributed to the design and manuacturing o this stove.

Collection o Bualo and Erie County Historical Society, used by permission.





patternmakers became highly prized skilled

workers within some o the largest actories

in the country. Their knowledge o materials

and precise execution determined the quality

o the oundry’s nal products. In this way,

the traditional crat o woodworking lay at

the heart o industrial iron casting.

This seeming juxtaposition fies in the

ace o our commonly assumed separation

o traditional crats rom industrialproduction, an instinct that may be especially

pronounced in the case o iron oundries,

whose ery urnaces and molten metal have

become quintessential symbols o industry

writ large. It was precisely this perceived

division that drove Rohls to rewrite his

own history. By the 1890s, he could not

sell himsel as an artist or a cratsman in the Arts and Crats mode i he had been

tainted by what had come to be seen as the

mechanical, inhuman infuence o industry.

Despite having moved to Bualo specically

to work or the Sherman S. Jewett company,

one o the largest producers o stoves in

the country at the time (Figure 2), Rohls

instead emphasized his early career as aShakespearian actor. Yet patternmaking was

in act a greatly respected skill that required

a signicant degree o individual creativity,

precision, and intimacy with materials. It

is this irony that makes patternmaking

a useul example to help uncover and

understand ways that traditional crat skills

were reoriented as late nineteenth-century industry grew.

Myths about Making Things in theIndustrial Age

Rohls’ denial o his roots in industry

stemmed in large part rom the anti-modern

sentiments pervading the upper and middle

classes at the end o the nineteenth century.

Over the previous ty years, a war had been

waged and lost to unite the elds o art and

industry. Led in the English-speaking world

by British thinker John Ruskin, who hoped

to raise appreciation among the general

public or the value o artistic labor in all

media, the movement aimed to improve the

quality and perceived beauty o architecture,

domestic interiors, and the built environmentas a whole. Despite having the most

visible platorm o the age, London’s Great

Exhibition o 1851, Ruskin’s eorts ailed. His

ght ended, according to art historian Tim

Barringer, with his deeat in the amous 1878

trial against the artist James Abbott McNeill

Whistler. Ruskin argued that Whistler’s rather

abstract painting Nocturne in Black and Gold:The Falling Rocket (1875) was “a pot o paint

fung in the public’s ace” that did not merit

the high price summoned. The outcome

established that the amount o time spent

making a painting did not correlate directly

to the air market price. This is just one

instance o the Victorian treatment o artistic

work as undamentally dierent rom other work, a conclusion that had in act been in

and out o ashion since the Renaissance. In

the popular imagination, there arose over the

course o the nineteenth century a simplied

but steadast division between things made

by hand and things made by machine.2

This simplied division between art and

industry grew into two mutually supportingmyths about making things. The rst

denigrated actory production. Growing

rom the Aesthetic Movement’s “art or art’s

sake” ideals that deeated Ruskin, this line

o thinking predominated among the upper

and middle classes, who began to see urban

actories and their workorces (largely made





up o immigrants) as threats to the health

o the dominant culture. As people moved

into trolley-car suburbs and neighborhoods

and away rom coal-ed actories and

shipping yards, they came to regard industrial

production as better kept out o sight, even

i it was necessary to cultural advancement.

This attitude had developed over the

century, as opinion shited rom celebrating

industry and reveling in the heights o humanachievement to criticizing the noise, danger,

and conditions inside the actories.3

The second myth, associated particularly

with the writings o Ruskin and William

Morris, exalted the lone cratsman. In

contrast to devalued actory labor, the

cratsman’s work was held in increasingly

high esteem—but only i it was perormedwithout machines. The best things are made,

this line o thinking went, by one person

working alone in a peaceul setting using

age-old techniques and natural materials.

On to this single heroic gure was projected

nostalgia or a time and place perceived to

be simpler and more natural, in which men

retained power over their own work (andover their culturally dened male identities).

While William Morris’ predilection or

Medieval-style guilds, the revival o handicrat,

and reduction o unnecessary ornament

spread quickly in America around 1900, his

socialist underpinnings did not. Without

this theoretical basis in the dignity o work,

America’s Arts and Crats Movementbecame particularly contradictory, spreading

rhetoric about the morality o “honest”

work while rarely addressing the horrible

realities o most manual labor perormed in

the country.4

Both o these powerul myths—the

denigration o industrial production and the

exaltation o the lone cratsman—rejected

actory settings. These anti-modern

prejudices have deeply infuenced public

thinking about crat, and still underpin the

sentimental preerence or the handmade

today. They have also aected the questions

that historians have asked about the history

o making things in America. Since the

1970s, labor historians have been working

to overcome the misconception thatindustrialization constituted a monolithic

replacement o handwork with automated

machines. In act, they have pointed out, the

shit o master cratsmen and journeymen

into the actory occurred through

numerous complex accommodations

and negotiations worked out between

individuals in the contexts o their particular communities. Dierent people responded

in dierent ways to the vast changes in

technologies and transpor tations that

orever altered market demand, thus

producing multiple and widely varying

industrial revolutions.5

Likewise, historians o design and crat,

as well as makers themselves, have recently been challenging our assumed division

between industry and handwork. Glenn

Adamson’s recent book Thinking through

Crat parses David Pye’s 1968 classic The

Nature and Art o Workmanship, showing

how the British theorist broke down the

moral high ground colonized by Ruskin’s

idea o skill. Instead o assigning value to the perceived talent o a thing’s maker,

which had been closely tied to class and

taste since Ruskin’s time, Pye concentrated

on workmanship. Skill, he argued, derived

rom one’s manipulation o tools—whether

powered by hand, steam, or electricity—

in the management o risk. The level o





cratsmanship, then, is not intrinsically tied

to the market value o a thing, but rather

to the risks taken to create it.6 Recently in

the ar t world, many practitioners have been

creating juxtapositions o crat process and

mass-produced objects as a way o showing

the interpenetration o dierent registers

o production. Terese Agnew’s quilt Portrait

o a Textile Worker (2005), or instance, is

collaged rom thousands o labels takenrom mass-produced clothing. It invites

viewers to recognize the invisible crat labor

involved in the contemporary garment

industry.7

Seen in the context o these

increasingly nuanced understandings o

crat, patternmaking emerges as a rich

subplot within the larger story o industrialproduction. Patternmakers oversaw an

intermediate step within large oundry

operations that combined both design

and handcrat. While much o the design

process or the nal metal object lay with

the engineers, and the actual abrication

o the casting took place in the oundry,

patternmakers retained signicant controlover the orm and technical details o

their patterns. And they did their work by

manipulating tools, managing risk, reacting

to the wood, and understanding metal.

In this way, they retained some o the

artisanal autonomy traditionally enjoyed

by cabinetmakers, carpenters, and other

woodworkers. At the same time, however, the hierarchy and specialization that

grew to ulll ever-increasing demand or

oundry products eventually splintered the

patternmaking eld, driving away workers like

Rohls who subscribed to the myth o the

lone cratsman.

The Craft of IndustrialPatternmaking

A general description o patternmaking can

never capture the diversity o individual

work nor provide a ull history o its

industrial development. Rather, the ollowing

discussion oers a selective view through

period proessional manuals, a short-lived

trade magazine called The Patternmaker ,

Rohls’ career, and the historic patternmakingshop at the Calumet & Hecla Foundry

(1904–68), a business venture o a northern

Michigan copper mining company o the

same name. While Calumet & Hecla

operated in the twentieth century instead

o the nineteenth, its patternmakers had

trained in the same methods as earlier rms.

Much o the company site and its recordsare now preserved at the National Park

Service’s Keweenaw National Historical

Park in Calumet, Michigan, which holds

tens o thousands o patterns, a pattern

shop ull o tools, drawings, records, and

an oral history taken rom John Wilson, a

company patternmaker rom 1936 to 1968.

Together this material orms an invaluableresource or understanding the design and

production o wooden patterns as well as

the patternmaker’s role during a time o

great change and reinvention in the history

o American crat.8

The goal o patternmaking was to create

a surace rom which a mold could be made

to cast a metal orm with very particular dimensions. Specications came either

rom the patternmaker himsel (most were

men), or rom an engineer, a proessional

specialization increasingly present in

American industry in the last decades o the

nineteenth century (Figure 3). In this way,





Fig 3 “Anatomy o a Large Pattern,” rom The Patternmaker 1 (March 1904): 26.





patternmaking could t into the category

o making in the “mechanical tradition”

described recently by historian David

McGee. With the “crat tradition,” designer

and cratsperson are one and the same,

whereas designs made in the mechanical

tradition have been worked out on paper

beore being made in actuality. The process

o determining nal orm and dimensions,

known to design historians as cutting andtting, occurs with a pencil and eraser

rather than with chisel and gouge. Generally,

patterns had to be designed this way

because each casting had to t precisely with

other castings. Their orms and dimensions

required pre-planning and could not be

altered easily in reaction to a mistake or a

knot in the wood, as would be the case witha sculptor or a urnituremaker.9

A close examination o the

patternmaker’s job, however, suggests that

more o his work resembled McGee’s “crat

tradition” than might be expected. The

design drawings or blueprints created by

engineers did not prescribe the interior

o the patterns, only their exterior orms. What mattered was the precision o a

pattern’s dimensions and the smoothness o

its nal surace. How that nal surace was

achieved ell entirely to the patternmaker.

In making choices about the construction

o the pattern and how it t into the mold,

patternmakers retained signicant elements

o a creative design process. They workedin standard woodworking shops, using hand

tools as well as those powered by steam and

later electricity, operating in that eedback

loop between mind, hand, and material that

lies at the heart o the crat tradition (Figure

4). While cutting and tting might have lain

in the hands o the engineers, patternmakers

manipulated the designs to accommodate

the casting sequence and went through an

intimate process o trial and error with their

materials. They interacted not only with the

drawing, but also with wood. They also had

to understand metal and collaborate with

the molders, oundrymen, and machinists. At

once designers and cratsmen, they occupied

an intermediate step o production within

the oundry, where their ingenuity amidcountless variables could not be codied

into a xed set o instructions or standard

procedures. In this way, patternmakers

developed what today’s cultural theorists

might call tacit or embodied knowledge.

Their choices in what to make and how to

make it derived rom direct accumulated

experience with wood and metal and thesense perception o their bodily actions. To

study the patternmaker’s process requires

that we acknowledge the links between mind

and body, design and crat, aesthetics and

action.10

Patternmakers designed the interiors

o their patterns with longevity in mind.11 I

patterns contracted or warped with weather and age, they would quickly be rendered

unusable, thus deeating the purpose o

storing patterns at all. So, patternmakers

commonly used a cumulative building-up

o wooden layers to create a shaped mass

(Figures 5a and 5b). The maker laminated

boards one on top o the other, orienting

the grain o each piece perpendicular to thelast. This cross-graining reduced splintering

and warpage. Hide glue, the odorous age-old

adhesive warmed in pattern shops by steam-

powered glue-pot-holders, sucked the boards

together as the patternmaker positioned

and attached them with counter-sunk nails.

Assembly occurred on layout tables that





Fig 4 Cover, Scientifc American, May 29, 1880. The University o Wisconsin—Madison, Wendt Library.





Figs 5a and 5b Pattern rom Calumet & Hecla Foundry, Calumet, Michigan, 32 in. diam. × 4½ in. Both

sides shown. Courtesy o National Park Service, Keweenaw National Historical Park, Calumet, Michigan,

H3-203. Photo: Tricia Miller.

sat lower than traditional workbenches and

were leveled to ensure precise assembly o

the laminates. Large companies like Allis-

Chalmers, a machine tool manuacturer in

Milwaukee, provided steam-warmed drying

rooms to increase the speed o their patternproduction.12 As a result o this layering

process, nished patterns usually eatured a

striated surace o horizontal seams between

regularly dimensioned stock.

For more complicated orms, traditional

joints helped keep the pattern rom changing

shape too easily. Joshua Rose’s The Pattern

Maker’s Assistant (1878) advised usingdovetails whenever possible, not just or

strength but or their resistance to shape-

change. I using mortise-and-tenon joints,

Rose noted that the mortises should

be graduated to keep the tenons rom

protruding as the wood shited. Tenons

could also be wedged to help keep them

in place and protect the smoothness o the

pattern’s surace.13 At some o the large

oundries, clients could order distinct classes

o patterns depending on the degree o

precision or permanence needed.14 At other

times, the patternmaker decided how useula particular pattern might be to his own

oundry in the uture, and built it either to

last or to be discarded.

Patternmakers in these large oundries

generally worked with white pine, but ideally

they would have chosen cherry or maple,

whose tight-grained suraces would not have

let an imprint in the nal castings. They sometimes used mahogany or castings that

required sharp edges, not only because this

ne wood could be worked precisely but

also because it resisted damage, allowing the

pattern to be used repeatedly. Wood choice,

however, was always a balance between

quality and expense and inexpensive pine,





which had the added advantage o being sot

and easy to carve, was the most commonly

used wood in industrial patternmaking. At

Calumet & Hecla in northern Michigan,

or instance, the neighboring virgin orests

owned by the company provided high-

quality cheap material.15 Notably in relation

to Charles Rohls, one wood never used

or patternmaking was oak, due to its

pronounced grain and tendency to splinter.Oak’s dramatic gure made it undesirable in

Rohls’ industrial work but inspirational in his

artistic endeavors, a distinction that probably

helped him separate these two types o

work in his mind.

Whatever grain or other imperections

remained on the completed pattern’s surace

was smoothed over with sandpaper andlayers o varnish. Shellac, oten tinted with

lampblack or another colorant, was applied

with brushes to create a hard, smooth, and

visually uniorm surace. As a result o their

laminated construction, patterns usually

eatured exposed end grain that could mar

the surace o the nal casting and also

jeopardized the lie o the pattern. Heavy varnish coats prevented the absorption o

moisture, which would cause warpage and

splitting over time. Large pattern shops

might have a specic nishing shop in which

less-skilled employees perormed the nal

sandpapering and varnishing.16

In addition to working with wood in

order to create a precise surace shape andavoid warpage over time, patternmakers

also had to manipulate the prescribed design

to account or the intricacies o the casting

process. Central to patternmaking was an

understanding o the shrinkage o metal

when it is cast. Joshua Rose’s handbook

described the dierent ways that metal

would shrink, depending on the alloy and

the shape o the mold. In general, the metal

that rst hit the cold surace o the inside o

the sand mold would contract. The metal

urther inside the casting would cool more

slowly, contracting at a lower rate. Each

part o the pattern, then, was adjusted to

account or dierent rates o shrinkage.17

To scale up their patterns rom design

drawings, patternmakers used special shrink rules. Because iron generally shrinks by an

eighth-inch per oot, shrink rules calibrated

or iron casting eatured inches that actually

measured an inch and an eighth. Likewise,

shrink rules or steel extended each inch by

a urther quarter-inch, and rules or brass

and aluminum by three-sixteenths o an

inch. Thus a nished pattern matched thedesign drawing when measured with the

appropriate shrink rule but was a raction

larger than the drawing when measured with

a standard ruler.18

While the cooling o metal may have

been complex, it was at least calculable. In

contrast, the precarious process o molding

the sand rom the pattern was unpredictable,adding an element o uncertainty or

which patternmakers also had to account.

Molders surrounded a pattern with specially

ormulated damp sand, packed very tightly

within two halves o a fask or a strapped

wooden box (Figure 6). To remove the

pattern, the worker opened the mold,

inserted a steel rod into the “rapping plate”(which had been strategically installed by

the patternmaker), and hit or “rapped” the

rod. This jolt loosened the sand around

the pattern. The molder then inserted

a threaded rod into the next hole in the

rapping plate with which he pulled out the

pattern.19 This process inevitably shited the





Fig 6 Molding Diagrams, details rom The Patternmaker 1 (March 1904): 34.





sand to some degree depending on the

strength o the rapping and the evenness

o the blows. Patternmakers had to predict

these habits o the molders.

In order to accommodate the molding

process, patternmakers built their patterns

with a slight taper, called “drat,” which made

them easier to remove rom the sand.20

Many patterns could not be removed

without ruining the mold and were built inseveral parts. Usually the parts t together

with dowel joints. The top o a split pattern

was called the cope and the bottom the

drat, just like the two halves o the fask. I

hard edges on the pattern might jeopardize

the mold or result in weak areas o the

casting, patternmakers oten sotened

these corners with leather or wax llets.21 The challenge o balancing these variables

was colorully described by a writer in The

Patternmaker in 1904: “I don’t know any

material nearly as unreliable as the stu

[the patternmaker] is expected to trim to a

hairs-breadth [sic]. Wood, wax, and leather

are all very well in their place, but they

have a proanity-provoking way o wriggling that means much worry or all hands rom

oundry to nish.”22

Indeed all hands were required to

wrangle these “wriggling” components

into complex nished molds. For hollow

castings or appendages that were undercut,

patternmakers included specications or

the molding shop. At the Calumet & HeclaFoundry, or instance, patternmakers painted

parts o the pattern yellow to indicate

that a core box needed to be added. The

molders would make these cores out

o sand or another disposable material

and insert them into the mold ater the

original hollow was taken. I making a pipe,

or instance, the sand core created the

hollow interior o the cylinder and could

be removed rom the metal casting once

cooled. Likewise, yellow with red stripes

indicated that a pattern had a loose piece

to be placed separately in the mold, and

yellow with black stripes marked a part

o the pattern that should be stopped o

with sand to keep it rom being part o

the nal casting. Even as patterns werebuilt up rom many laminated pieces in

the pattern shop, they continued to be

altered during the molding process. The

molds combined parts o dierent materials

that oten were not even attached to

one another until seated in the molding

fask. In eect, patterns were never ully

nished, never whole, until in the mold. Thepatternmaker could not nish a pattern

without the collaboration o the molder.23

Collaboration and accommodation directed

the patternmaker’s manipulation o the

prescribed design.

In addition to the molder, the

patternmaker worked closely with the

machinist. All castings had rough edgesand sprue created by the mold seams,

which needed to be removed. But more

oten than not, alterations in the machine

shop were planned ahead and involved the

addition o precise threading or dimensions

unattainable in the primary casting process.

At Calumet & Hecla, patternmakers added

red paint to suraces that required machining.Patternmakers also worked with machinists

to tackle the problems associated with very

large castings. John Wilson remembered a

pipe so sizeable that the pattern was built

two eet too long at the top, so all the

impurities could rise and be machined o.24

Like all patternmakers, he responded to the





engineer’s drawing according to the material

realities o the casting process.

The Role of Patternmakers andtheir Patterns

Patternmakers had complex relationships

with their output. Large companies sold

ully assembled machines such as boilers,

locomotives, or heating and cooking stoves,

like the ones Rohls designed at Jewett. Thehands o the patternmakers, however, never

touched those nal products. The cast

pieces were made and assembled down

the line, long ater the patternmakers’ jobs

were done. Many o the characteristics o

the nal iron products, including the strength

o their crystalline structures and the

smoothness o their suraces, depended on the skills o the engineers and oundrymen,

not on the patternmakers. Moreover,

any individual casting that resembled a

particular pattern was lost among the

many—oten thousands—o assembled

pieces. Appreciation o these products

derived rom their overall unction and

smooth running, which depended on, buteectively subsumed, the precision or quality

o individual castings.

Indeed, the casting process itsel was all

about losing the wooden patterns. First the

pattern was rendered as a void. The mold

replicated its orm and surace, creating

a shadow o the pattern but containing

nothing. While the pattern had beenpainstakingly assembled rom many shaped

pieces, the casting was made very quickly

in a single ery moment when the molten

metal fowed into the mold. All the interior

structure o the pattern, its horizontal

laminated layers and vertical seams, was

replaced by an organic fow that hardened

into a complex crystallized solid. In a hot and

seemingly otherworldly process, the sawdust,

ker marks, and visible grain o the pine

were replaced by the invisible ne structure

o hard metal. The metal version o the

pattern’s surace moved on to the machine

shop but the wooden pattern itsel had been

removed completely.

In this way, patternmaking lacked a certain

nality. Not only was the patternmaker’s cratsystematically worked out o the nal metal

casting, but patterns themselves were never

ully completed. The pattern never matched

the given blueprints because it was scaled

up, had drat added, and probably required

some core boxes or stop-os. It was never

as close to the drawing as when it was

seated in the fask with all its appendagesand careully planned additions. And even

then it might not have been close enough,

because castings always required cleaning

up or machining. Even once a casting was

nished, the pattern went into storage to

await another use. Its job was not done, nor

was the patternmaker’s, who might retrieve

the pattern again later and reuse it to ll anew order. Depending on the amount o

time elapsed, the pattern might have changed

shape slightly, requiring repair or alteration.

Patternmaking was a constant negotiation

between what you have now and what

you want next, what you can make at the

moment and what will inevitably change over

time.Seen in another way, i we consider the

nal products o a patternmaker to be the

patterns themselves rather than the cast iron

products, these cratsmen enjoyed unusually

prolonged relationships with their creations.

Companies kept patterns or many years,

which represented a signicant investment





Fig 7 “Gear Floor in Pattern Storage” at Stilwell-

Bierce & Smith-Vaile Company, Dayton, Ohio,

rom The Patternmaker 1 (April 1904): 44.

o time and skill and unctioned a bit like

intellectual property today. Companies oten

aorded considerable space to their patterns,

building multi-story pattern storage acilities

and developing elaborate cataloging systems

(Figure 7). These relationships, however,

existed entirely within the actory campus,

making them eectively invisible to outside

consumers. In act, the patternmakers were

especially obscured by the complex andopaque casting process, hidden among

their many other more visible collaborators:

engineers, oundrymen, managers, and

production workers. Patternmakers neither

called the shots nor aced the consequences.

This invisibility seems to have been at

the heart o debates that lled the pages o

proessional publications around the turn o the century. Like many skilled proessions,

patternmaking had been undergoing a

steady process o proessionalization in the

nineteenth century. It was taught in training

centers like Brooklyn’s Cooper Union,

where Rohls studied as a teenager. By the

turn o the century, high schools oered

patternmaking as a marketable skill and

patternmakers’ handbooks abounded. Once

employed, patternmakers earned more

than many other oundry workers due to

their education, skill, and importance to the

company’s success. Their location within

the actory campus refected this rank, as

pattern shops tended to appear on upper

foors, which indicated status (though it also took advantage o the light).25 The pattern

shop at Calumet & Hecla was in its own

building made o thick brick walls instead o

the dark rough stone that ormed most o

the other company buildings. Pattern shops,

then, existed ar removed rom the heat

and danger o the urnaces and the casting

foors. This ensured a degree o comort andseparation that removed them physically and

psychologically rom the oundrymen and

their more inernal tasks (Figure 8).

Even so, writers in proessional

publications elt the need to stand up or

patternmaking’s importance. In 1891, Peter S.

Dingey published a patternmaking handbook,

much o which had already appearedin the American Machinist magazine, in

which he explicitly deended his trade.

“[Patternmaking] is oten underrated by a

class o machinists who think that because

a patternmaker is not called upon to work

in iron, and to one-hundredth or one-

thousandth part o an inch, that there is

not much in patternmaking.”

26

He arguedinstead that patternmakers must remain

knowledgeable about all areas o oundry

work, eectively trying to gain respect or

their essential intermediary role. He was

ghting against the tendency o managers to

think o patternmaking as “a necessary evil,”

an epithet explained by another writer as





Fig 8 “Sawing Bevel Gear Teeth,” rom The Patternmaker 1 (April 1904): 71.

rising rom the patternmakers’ status as “non-

producers.”27

This type o advocacy also appeared in

The Patternmaker . J.D. Homan, associate

proessor o practical machines at Purdue

University, argued that while the ultimate

responsibility or a machine’s success ell to

the designer, “ollowing closely in the line o

responsibility is the patternmaker who takes

the designer’s ideas and gives them orm.”28

Other writers repeatedly stressed the

patternmaker’s vast breadth o knowledge,

rom woodworking to the properties o

metals, math, engineering, and machining.





Their commentaries celebrated these

cratsmen’s expertise but also demonstrated

the patternmaker’s liminal position between

many dierent areas o the production

system. Their position made them essential,

but let their proessional status ill-dened

and indeterminate.

The Patternmaker itsel suggests a racture

in the proession along these lines (Figure

9). Published or less than two years, themagazine changed its name to Wood Crat

in 1905.29 It retained the same publisher,

in Cleveland, Ohio, but adopted a new

subtitle: “A Journal or All Woodworkers.”

An announcement to this eect on the nal

page o The Patternmaker suggests that this

change would “broaden its eld” and count

among its readers not only patternmakersbut also cabinetmakers and other “expert

workers in wood.” Its description o

uture articles suggests a tentative shit

to include not only technical inormation

or woodworkers in actories, but also

“entertaining articles” or hobbyists. These

were going to include a description o a visit

to Roycrot, the guild-style crat community in East Aurora, New York, now seen as

among the most infuential proponents o

urnituremaking in the Arts and Crats mode;

an “old-time woodworker” recalling his days

as an apprentice in the 1840s; and an expert

discussing timber preservation.

This splintering o o woodworkers rom

the proession o industrial patternmakingseems to echo the trajectory o Charles

Rohls’ own career. A patternmaker’s

position as concealed team player within a

large oundry probably never satised Rohls,

whose dramatic personality had always

hungered or the recognition o authorship.

Even while working or stove actories in

New York and New Jersey he had sought

and received three patents in his own

name.30 More importantly, he had taken time

o to act in traveling theater companies,

garnering him nation-wide critical acclaim

or his oratory skills. While no documentary

evidence hints at the reasons or Rohls’

departure rom the Jewett Stove Company

in Bualo, it seems that his wie, the amous

novelist Anna Katharine Green, couldsupport the amily and both o their artistic

callings. Starting his new lie as the maker

o “Artistic Furniture,” Rohls joined his

wie as a leader in Bualo’s art and culture

scene, where he played the part o an artist

woodworker with his own individual vision.

This break rom industry, made by Rohls

in the 1890s and by The Patternmaker editorsin 1905, was probably motivated in part by

social class. Writers or The Patternmaker had

been white-collar engineers with degrees

rom, or teaching positions at, universities.

Many patternmakers, especially those who

had started their careers in the 1870s as

Rohls had, may have advanced ar enough

in the companies to be dratsmen, engineers,or managers by the end o the century.

Some may have obtained patents as Rohls

had. As the workorce grew, became less

skilled, and oten more oreign-born, many

o these higher-ranking individuals may have

re-envisioned themselves as woodworkers

instead o actory workers, and perhaps

even ound ideological ties with the Arts andCrats movement and social reormers. At

the same time, some o their compatriots

chose alternate identities. Other high-status

patternmakers went on to be engineers

within industry, aligning themselves with

company management. Some lamented the

hierarchy that had reduced the practical





Fig 9 Cover page o The Patternmaker 1 (May 1904).





knowledge o managers and led to “poor

work and labor trouble” in pattern shops

around the country.31 Still others, perhaps

with dierent political leanings, ounded the

North American Pattern Makers’ League and

joined the union movements.32

Tied up in these class-related social shits

were the myths o making then taking hold

in the country, which turned Rohls and

The Patternmaker editors against industrialproduction. Patternmaking was a crat

process in which one person used long-

practiced skills to manipulate a design. But

it was also just one step mediating between

phases o the casting process. It required

considerable collaboration with other

people and understanding o engineering

and math as well as the properties o metaland sand. It was at once an isolated crat

and the heart o an industry. For American

tastemakers, these characteristics were

increasingly coming to seem incompatible.

On the one hand, the ideal o the lone

cratsman made patternmakers seem too

dependent on others.33 Those seeking

authorship, like Rohls, shunned it. At thesame time, capitalist actory owners seeking

“producers” begrudged the intermediary

role played by these industrial artisans. The

patternmakers could not have pleased

either o these par ties; they were both

removed rom the nal product and

instrumental to its making. The choice

made by Rohls and the publishers o ThePatternmaker to turn against their industrial

roots helped reiy the myths o making

that have surrounded crat in the twentieth

century. They helped to urther conceal

the crat o the patternmaker—with all its

embodied knowledge, design processes,

and collaborative complexity—behind a

preconceived shroud o animosity toward

actory production.

Interestingly, however, a close look at

Rohls’ urniture reveals the persistence o

his patternmaker’s artisanal values. For Rohls,

woodworking was oten a means to an

end, an intermediate step toward the nal

product, much as it was in patternmaking.

His chairs and case pieces seldom eature

traditional joinery. Rather, he tended toassemble boards with screws and conceal

the heads with rough-hewn plugs. This

gave the urniture a rustic hand-made look

without demanding the time and eort

o hand-cut joints. In this way, he created

simply-built wooden canvases or his ar tistic

expression in which the construction

was secondary to the bold, meticulousornament. Likewise, Rohls conceived o his

case pieces much like cast iron stoves. Just

as he had designed stoves as discrete iron

plates assembled into boxes with solder

and ornamental asteners, so did Rohls

assemble desks and chests rom ornamented

boards. This simple construction let him

showcase his organic carved panels and boldsilhouettes.34

Rohls may have pursued this expression

o creative energy in wood to dey the

anonymity o patternmaking. Within the

stove actories, even when Rohls had

advanced to the position o designer, all

traces o his hands’ interactions with wood

had been erased rom the nal products. By contrast, in his urniture, Rohls’ hand and

his eye were ront and center, showcased in

visible chisel marks and the playul shaping

o chair backs. Even in the metal hardware

included as latches, handles, or in his copper

lamps, Rohls oregrounded the action o

his own making. He tended to buy sheet





metal or wire and hand roll it into decorative

curls. He seems to have avoided cast metal

altogether in order to show o the work o

the maker’s hand directly.

While patternmaking had been about

creating a single paradigm rom which

exact multiple copies were reproduced,

urnituremaking or Rohls was about

presenting his unique vision in a small

suite o equally unique objects. That visionemphasized all the anomalies o wood and

woodworking that he had been taught to

suppress as a patternmaker—he celebrated

wood grain instead o sanding and varnishing

it; he let the trace o his hand instead

o erasing it completely; and he situated

himsel as company gurehead instead o

an anonymous acilitator within a largehierarchy. Rohls’ “Artistic Furniture,” then,

was both reliant on and in direct deance

o his training in industrial production. As in

patternmaking, the joinery in Rohls’ urniture

was a means to an end, but at this point in

his lie his objective was artistic expression in

the late nineteenth-century mode. Like many

others o his generation, Rohls etishizedwood because o its perceived distance rom

industrial production. That distance, however,

had been socially constructed—as Rohls

knew rsthand.

Notes

1 For more on Rohls’ early career in industrial

stovemaking, see Sarah Fayen, “Everything in My Lie Seemed to Point Toward This Work,” in Joseph

Cunningham, The Artistic Furniture o Charles Rohls

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 1–17;

Michael James, Drama in Design: The Lie and

Work o Charles Rohls (Bualo: The Burcheld

Art Center/Bualo State College Foundation,

1994). I wish to thank Joseph Cunningham and

Bruce Barnes or encouraging me to investigate

Rohls’ patternmaking career as we prepared the

book and exhibition “The Artistic Furniture o Charles Rohls,” co-organized by the Milwaukee

Art Museum, the Chipstone Foundation, and

American Decorative Art 1900 Foundation. For

assistance with this article, I wish to thank Glenn

Adamson, Stuart Baird, Jill Casid, Ned Cooke,

George Fayen, Martha Glowacki, Brian Hoduski,

Ann Smart Martin, Tricia Miller, and Timothy

James Scarlett.

2 Tim Barringer, Men At Work: Art and Labour in Victorian Britain (New Haven and London:

Published or The Paul Mellon Centre or Studies

in British Art by Yale University Press, 2005), 313–

21; Deborah Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-

Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style (Berkeley:

University o Caliornia Press, 1989), 1–16; T.J.

Jackson Lears, No Place o Grace: Antimodernism

and the Transormation o American Culture,

1880–1920 (Chicago: University o Chicago Press,

1981), 60–96; Glenn Adamson, Thinking Through

Crat (Oxord: Berg, 2007), 70–1.

3 For more on the Aesthetic Movement, see

Doreen Bolger, et al., In Pursuit o Beauty:

Americans and the Aesthetic Movement (New York:

The Metropolitan Museum o Art; Rizzoli, 1986);

Mary Warner Blanchard, Oscar Wilde’s America:

Counterculture in the Gilded Age (New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1998).

4 The standard text about the American Arts and

Crats movement is Wendy Kaplan, “The Art That

is Lie”: The Arts and Crats Movement in America,

1875–1920 (Boston: The Museum o Fine Arts,

Boston; Bulnch Press, Little, Brown and Company,

1987). For a discussion about the meaning o

“handmade” in the turn-o-the-twentieth-century

urniture market, see Edward S. Cooke, Jr., “Arts

and Crats Furniture: Process or Product?” in

The Ideal Home: The History o Twentieth-Century American Crat, 1900–1920 (New York: American

Crat Museum; Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1993),

64–76.

5 The landmark argument or a more nuanced

view o industrialization is Raphael Samuel,

“Workshop o the World: Steam Power and

Hand Technology in Mid-Victorian Britain,” History





Workshop Journal 3 (Spring 1977): 6–72. For a

recent version o the “historical alternatives”approach see Robert B. Kristoerson, Crat

Capitalism: Cratworkers and Early Industrialization

in Hamilton, Ontario, 1840–1872 (Toronto:

University o Toronto Press, 2007). I wish to

thank Timothy James Scarlett or his discussions

o industrial history.

6 Adamson, 69–81; David Pye, The Nature and

Art o Workmanship (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1968), 4–8. For more on the continuities o skill over the centuries in

American urnituremaking see Edward S. Cooke,

Jr., “The Study o American Furniture rom

the Perspective o the Maker,” in Perspectives

in American Furniture, edited by Gerald W. R.

Ward (Winterthur : The Henry Francis du Pont

Winterthur Museum, Inc., 1988), 118–19.

7 For more on this quilt see the collections

website o the Museum o Arts and Design,http://collections.madmuseum.org/code/

emuseum.asp.

8 Some o the Calumet & Hecla patternmaking

material is owned by Coppertown USA Mining

Museum in Calumet, Michigan.

9 David McGee, “From Cratsmanship to

Dratsmanship: Naval Architecture and the Three

Traditions o Early Modern Design,” in Technology

and Culture, Vol. 40, No. 2 (April 1999), 209–36.

10 See or instance George Lako and Mark

Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied

Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought

(New York: Basic Books, 1999). Many writers

have used French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s

metaphor o “the old” to link mind and body

in cultural production. See or instance Anna

Munster, Materializing New Media: Embodiment

in Inormation Aesthetics (Hanover: DartmouthUniversity Press, 2006): 7; and Laura U. Marks,

Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media

(Minneapolis: University o Minnesota Press,

2002): xi.

11 Insights into late nineteenth-century

patternmaking come rom proessional

handbooks published in the period: P.S. [Peter

Spear] Dingey, Machinery Pattern Making:

Containing Full Size Profles o Gear Teeth and Fine Engravings on Full-Page Plates, Illustrating

Manner o Constructing Numerous and Important

Patterns and Core Boxes, second edition, revised

and enlarged (New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1891);

Joshua Rose, The Pattern Maker’s Assistant (New

York: D. Van Nostrand, Publisher, 1878); Isaac

McKim Chase, The Art o Pattern-Making (New

York: T. Wiley & Sons, 1903); Horace Traiton

Pureld, Wood Pattern-Making: The Fundamental

Principles o the Art (Ypsilanti, M.I.: The Schar

Tag, Label & Box, Co., 1906). I would also like to

thank Stuart Baird o the Keweenaw National

Historical Park and Coppertown USA Mining

Museum or sharing his knowledge about

patternmaking in the Calumet & Hecla oundry

and pattern shop. Interview with Stuar t Baird,

Calumet, Michigan, March 31, 2010. Thanks go

also to Brian Hoduski, Chie o Museum Services,

National Park Service, Keweenaw NationalHistorical Park, Calumet, Michigan.

12 “Patternshop and Pattern Storage at the West

Allis Plant o the Allis-Chalmers Co.,” The

Patternmaker 1 (March 1904): 1, in the Hathi

Trust Digital Library, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/

mdp.39015010724980 (accessed Fall 2009).

13 Rose, 167–9.

14 See The Patternmaker 1 (March 1904): 9.15 M.J. Golden, “Wood or Patterns,” The

Patternmaker 1 (March 1904): 15, in the Hathi

Trust Digital Library, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/

mdp.39015010724980 (accessed Fall 2009). See

also F.W. Putnam, “Pattern Making or Amateurs:

Something about Suitable Wood,” Amateur Work

3 (1904), available on ChestoBooks.com, http://

chestobooks.com/crats/popular-mechanics/

Amateur-Work-3/Pattern-Making-For-Amateurs-I-Something-about-Suitable-Woo.html (accessed

Fall 2009). Interview with Stuart Baird, March 31,

2010.

16 “Patternshop and Pattern Storage,” 5.

17 Rose, 244–7. See also J.D. Homan, “The

Patternmaker and the Machine Designer,” The

Patternmaker 1 (1904): 29.

http://collections.madmuseum.org/code/emuseum.asp


http://hdl.handle.net/2027/









18 John Wilson, “Pattern Making at Calumet and

Hecla Mining Company,” broadside in thecollection o Coppertown USA Mining Museum,

Calumet, Michigan; Rose, 247.

19 “Patternshop and Pattern Storage,” 5; Wilson, 1;

Baird Interview.

20 Putnam, 1; Wilson, 1; National Park Service,

Keweenaw NHP, Oral History Project

Collection, John Wilson Interview, July 12, 2001,

Kewe_40525, 33; Baird Interview.

21 National Park Service, Wilson Interview, 30.

22 John Drummond, “Shavings,” The Patternmaker 1

(May 1904): 88.

23 Wilson, 1; National Park Service, Wilson

Interview, 12, 13, 32; Dingey, 2–3.

24 Wilson, 1.

25 Dingey, 5.

26 Dingey, 3.

27 Joseph H. Springer, Sr., “Patternmakers, Past and

Present,” in The Patternmaker 1 (August 1904),

216.

28 Homan, 27.

29 This Wood Crat magazine was only published

until 1915 and does not appear to have direct ties to the magazine o the same name published

today.

30 For more on Rohls’ three stove patents see

Fayen, 7–8.

31 Springer, 216.

32 For more on the Pattern Makers’ National

League o North America see their publication,

The Pattern Makers’ Monthly Journal, which beganpublication in 1891 as the Monthly Trade Journal

o the Pattern Makers’ National League o North

America.

33 Further counting against patternmaking amongst

Arts and Crats adherents was the prejudice

against the material o cast iron itsel. In a 1903

publication, W.R. Lethaby railed that “casting

in iron has been so abased and abused that it

is almost dicult to believe that the metal hasanything to oer the ar ts.” Lethaby, “O Cast

Iron,” in Arts and Crats Essays, by Members o the

Arts and Crats Exhibition Society (London: Arts

and Crats Society; Longmans, Green & Co.,

1903), 194.

34 For a previous discussion o the infuence o

patternmaking on the construction o Rohls’

urniture see Fayen, 11–15.

Documents

The Craft of Industrial Pattern Making