| Title |
|
Timmerman (Search for the image) |
| Translated title |
Carpenter |
| Intro |
Text by dr D. Barnes, accompanying Bramer’s drawing of a carpenter (`timmerman’) |
| Code of occupational group |
95410 |
| Description |
In a carpenter's shop, a man stands with his arms raised up; he holds a sharp broadaxe. The carpenter is bareheaded, wearing a leather apron, and is exerting a lot of strength. His knees are bent; his back is bent forward at the waist. His legs are spread apart to provide secure footing. His right foot is placed squarely on the large wooden block he is shaping. Chips of cut wood are near his feet. Behind the carpenter, an apprentice or assistant wearing a broad-brimmed hat, planes a plank. His knees are also bent and he leans over his work, using both hands to move the plane. A curl of wood is falling from in front of the blade. Several tools hang on the wall: an axe, another plane, a wide-toothed hand saw. Light pours in through the open double windows. A person wearing a cap peers in through the windows. The workshop floor is littered with pieces of shaped wood.
Carpenters were in demand during the 17th century, particularly since so many towns experienced population growth that led to new building. Carpenters had their own gild, separate from the ships' carpenters who worked in dockyards building and repairing ships and boats of all sizes. The Delft carpenters, along with woodworkers and blockmakers, belonged to the gild of St. Joseph.
Jan van Vliet's etching of the carpenters shows a wider range of identifiable carpenter tools, including a saw, chisel, hammer-poll adze, taper auger, squares, pattern shapes, chisel, compass, and brace and bit. Both Van Vliet and Bramer depict the carpenter assuming the same stance, facing right. In each case, a hat-wearing man uses a plane to smooth a plank. Carpenters were not an especially popular motif for 17th-century Dutch artists, despite the earlier Netherlandish tradition of associating the tools of the carpenter with St. Joseph (as, for example, in Robert Campin's altarpiece, "The Annunciation" at The Cloisters). Nevertheless, carpenters occasionally can be seen at work in cityscapes in which new construction is occurring. |
| Source |
Donna R. Barnes, Ed D, Street scenes, Leonard Bramer's drawings of seventeenth-century daily life (Hofstra Museum exhibition 1991). Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York.
Click here for the introductory essay on Bramer's drawings. |
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