Understanding formal dining settings can be important to the prop master who strives for historical and cultural accuracy. If a play, film or television show calls for characters to dine in a formalized setting, the amount of plates, utensils and glasses involved are numerous and often not laid out in the script. Following the conventions of formal dining settings help establish the time and place and flesh out the characters (not to mention giving the actors something to do in the scene). Many audience members will recognize when proper formal dining procedures are not followed.
Below is an image of a “typical” formal dining setting. By “typical”, I mean a contemporary style used in Western/Anglo-Saxon cultural settings. It can of course vary depending on the food being served and the level of formality, as well as by cultural and regional specifics. Nonetheless, the basic style presented in the picture below is relatively standard from the Edwardian period (1901-1910) to the present.
Formal dinner setting.
Careful research is always needed for recreating any sort of historical dinner settings. Before 1900, table settings differed much more between the countries of Western Europe, though formalized dinner settings in general have been practiced as far back as medieval times.
Tool collector or serious hobbyist? Either way, Jacques Jodoin’s incredible basement woodworking shop has to be seen to be believed. There’s three pages of photos of his shop with every tool imaginable; it almost looks like a store. I love all the tiny bins.
La Bricoleuse has been doing some interesting documentation of the armor that was rented for PlayMaker Rep’s upcoming repertory productions of Henry IVÂ and Henry VÂ (the same shows I just worked on). This post, for example, looks at photos of various pieces and annotates the choices made in their construction, describing what she likes (and what she doesn’t).
Die Hausbücher der Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderstiftungen has a collection of over 1300 color illustrations detailing many of the manufacturing processes and crafts from 1388 to the 19th century. The pages are in German, so you may want to run it through a translator.
This is an unfortunately brief article about working backstage in China, including a quote from a prop master. It sounds like they have to go through the same kinds of things we do over here though.
Theatre and films seem to have an awful lot of tobacco smoking in it, so it can be useful to the props person to be able to identify the parts and anatomy of common smoking devices. Cigars, cigarettes and pipes have endless variations of shapes and styles and have evolved much throughout history, but they do have parts that have remained somewhat consistent over time.
Cigar
foot – the end meant to be lit.
cigar band – a paper or foil loop that identifies the type and/or brand of cigar. The hobby of collecting cigar bands is known as vitolophily; you can find over 1,000 examples of old cigar bands at the “Up-in-Smoke” Cigar Band Museum.
wrapper – a spirally-rolled leaf of tobacco.
head – the end closest to the cigar band that goes in the smoker’s mouth.
tuck – where the wrapper is folded in to keep itself from unraveling.
tobacco – dried and fermented bunches of leaves.
Cigarette
filter – a cellulose tube not filled with tobacco meant to lower the amount of tar and other unwanted particles from entering the lungs. Invented in the mid-1920s. By the 1960s, the majority of cigarettes had filters, though even today you can still buy unfiltered ones.
foot – the end that goes in your mouth. On a fully-smoked cigarette, this is known as the butt.
band – similar to a cigar band but usually printed right on the cigarette paper. Can have the logo or just a simple design.
paper – a combustible tube-shaped wrapper to hold the tobacco.
tobacco – shredded tobacco leaves, tobacco by-products, and other additives.
Pipe
bit or mouthpiece – where one puts his or her mouth.
stem – the part that joins the shank with the bit or mouthpiece.
saddle – a flattened part for easier gripping.
shank – where the mortise on the bowl connects with the tenon on the stem.
bowl – part used to hold the tobacco. The interior hollow area is known as the chamber. Unsmoked tobacco in the bottom of the bowl after smoking is called dottle.
lunt – another name for pipe smoke.
Matchbook
cover – folded paper or cardboard piece to hold the matches. Frequently contains advertising or logos on the outside. The abrasive striking surface, or friction strip, used to light the matches is on the back cover. The hobby of collecting matchbook covers is known as phillumeny.
saddle – the area between the front and back of the cover.
head – the part of the match that is lit.
matchstick – the stem of a match.
front flap – the bit of the cover tucked inside to hold the matches.
staple – used to secure the matchsticks between the cover and the front flap.
I’ve always thought it might be helpful to have a way of determining the identity and style of a chair by using visual means rather than by memorizing the names of all sorts of periods and styles. Sure, one can attempt to divide all chairs into forty distinct styles, but that is more helpful after the fact. As a props person, we are often faced with an existing chair, or picture of a chair, and we need to discern its style so we can find more like it. “This chair has kind of a Chippendale back, but with turned legs. What is it?”
Well, I haven’t accomplished anything like that, but I have come across a series of plates in the book Furniture Designing and Draughting, by Alvan Crocker Nye, published in 1907. These plates break down and illustrate the variations in each of the parts of a chair. If you remove ornamentation and look at just the basic shapes, you can design almost any chair from Western furniture history simply by picking and combining these variations. Even with the rudimentary distillations of chair design in  these plates, you can create 486,000 distinct-looking chairs.
Chairs - Front and side elevations
Plate VII above shows variations on how the legs can be oriented. In the top row, we see side elevations of a chair with a straight back and straight legs, an inclined back with straight legs, an inclined back with back legs inclined, and the back and all legs inclined. In the second row, we see the back inclined and legs crossed, than front elevations showing an upright form, an inclined form, and finally an X or scissor form.
Arms, seats and stretchers
In Plate VII, we see the variations a chair’s arms can take. Under the “horizontal arm” drawing, we first see a plan showing how the orientation of the chair’s arm matches the shape of the seat. The two plans below it show how the arms curve out so the space between the arms is wider than the shape of the seat at the back. The two plans under the “receding arm post” show how the arm can be a compound curve or can be a continuation of the curve of the chair’s back. Finally, the elevation of the “sloping arm” chair shows that the arm can be higher in the back than in the front.
The plans of stretchers show how the reinforcing bracing of the legs can be arranged in either a box (trapezoid), an H, or an X (or cross) configuration.
Finally, the last column shows us different seat plans: square, trapezoid, triangle, circle, a circle and rectangle composite, and a circle and curves composite.
Outline of chair backs
Plate IX shows outlines of common chair backs. 1) Rectangular. 2) Trapezoidal. 3) Polygonal. 4) Elliptical. 5) Semi-circular. 6) Shield.
Composition of back
Plate X gives various compositions of the chair back. 1) Paneled. 2) “Splat”, vertical. 3) “Banister”, vertical. 4) “Four Back”, horizontal. Variations include the “Three Back”, or the much rarer “Five Back”. 5) Composite.
In the bottom right corner of the plate are four outlines of top rail shapes: horizontal, triangular, trapezoidal, and circular.
I like to look at what larger stationary woodworking tools looked like before the birth of electricity. So for today’s blog, I’m making you look at them too!
Large stationary tools which allow precision work did not appear with the birth of electricity. Though it may seem a table saw or band saw can only work off of an electrical motor, machines like these were common long before they needed to be plugged in. Running off of foot pedals, hand wheels, or a central axle driven by water, wind or steam power, these machines share many of the shapes, guards, rails and features of their electrical descendants.
This is from The complete dictionary of arts and sciences, Volume 2, by Temple H. Croker, Thomas Williams, Samuel Clarke, published 1765.
A collection of lathes circa 1765
The next few are from Amateur work, illustrated, Volume 1, by Ward, Lock & Co., published 1883.
Fret and scroll saws, circa 1883Band-saws, 1883Band-saw attachment for hand power, 1883Combine circular and band-saw, 1883
I imagine these kinds of tools took two people to operate; one on the wheel and one moving the material.
Circular Saw, 1883
The following come from Wood workers’ tools catalogue, published by C.A. Stelinger & Co. in 1897.
Empire scroll saw, 1897Ajax boring machine
Imagine if you had to tell people that your job was to operate a boring machine all day.
Making and finding props for theatre, film, and hobbies
