2.2 The panel maker’s workshop
Panel makers selected the sawn planks according to size, type, and quality before further processing them in their workshop. Wedge-shaped planks were carefully planed or shaved down to make them as even as possible, especially on the side intended for painting. The lighter and more perishable sapwood was removed, and imperfections in the planks were cut away with saws and planes until a flat and smooth surface was achieved. Larger supports were assembled from two or more planks whose edges were glued together in so-called butt-joints and secured in clamps while the glue consolidated. Finally, the surface was further planed and smoothed and the panel’s edges were bevelled. In at least some workshops, the front was then covered with a priming or ground layer to provide an even surface to paint on. A recently discovered painting of a panel maker’s workshop illustrates some of these tasks [5]: an assistant is shown thinning a panel with a plane, curls of wood falling to the floor, while elsewhere a board composed of six joined planks is held together in clamps while the glue cures, with a gluepot placed prominently on the floor beside them and a primed panel behind it. The master of the workshop, wearing a crown-like hat and brandishing his sceptre, presides like a king over the bustling room.
5
Anonymous (Southern Netherlands), Interior of a panel maker's workshop, 17th century
Inventories provide some further insights into the panel maker’s activities and the equipment necessary for this work. The 1627 inventory of the Antwerp art dealer and panel maker Jan van Haecht (II) (c. 1561-1621/1627) lists glue presses with panels clamped inside them, joiners’ workbenches and a large variety of clamps, saws, drills, axes and planes.1 The workshop also contained warped panels intended for reuse, as well as large stocks of finished panels and frames in standard sizes. Nearly all panels are listed as already primed, with 42 even primed on both sides. The presence of twelve easels highlights the workshop’s capacity for efficient large-scale panel priming. Van Haecht’s inventory reflects a highly organized craft in which panel makers not only produced supports in large quantities, but also worked according to established conventions of size, preparation, and finish.
Notes
1 Duverger 1987, pp. 30-62. Joiners and panel makers employed a variety of planes when trimming and assembling boards, including the strijkblok (shooting plane), gerfschaaf (rocking plane), roffel (a plane with a convex iron for rough work), blokschaaf (short smoothing plane), voorloper (smoothing plane), and bossingschaaf (panel-raising plane). In rare cases, a joiner’s plane with a dented blade has left a distinct ridge on the wood surface. This characteristic has sometimes enabled researchers to identify the same plane being used on different panels attributed to the same panel maker, see: Wadum 1988, pp. 82-87; Christie/Wadum 1992, pp. 9-11. More than 200 seventeenth-century planes, axes, and gauges, many produced in Amsterdam around 1664, are preserved in excellent condition at Skokloster Castle in Sweden. See Knutsson/Kylsberg 1985.