I traveled to Milan, Italy the week before last to inspect a factory in Turate, just North of Milan, and a product mock-up related to a construction project I am currently managing in Yokohama, Japan. My team and I had a free day before returning to Japan, so we decided to visit the National Museum of Science and Technology "Leonardo Da Vinci" in Milan. As a museum of technology, it was dated and underwhelming, but it houses an interesting violinmaker's shop, or at least a portion of a violinmaker's workshop's interior reassembled inside the museum.
Please notice the leg vise mounted on the end of the workbench. I have never seen a leg vise used in this configuration before. I'm not sure how the dog (or lug) located at the top surface of the jaw works, if it is fixed or can be moved up and down, but I suspect it is fixed. I intend to incorporate it into my bench when I can find another steel screw.
Another interesting item was the long plane resting on top of the bench. Details are not very clear, but it is obviously highly decorated with dramatic carving.
I would never consider decorating a plane in similar way, and find it difficult to grasp a sense of beauty, but in a time and place where all but a handful of people lived in desperate, muddy, diseased poverty, without the resources to buy a pot to piss in, much less a glazed and artfully painted one, there must have been great joy in using one's hands and skills to make an elaborately decorated tool. I hope we all feel something akin to this from time to time.
I wonder what the customers of the original owner of this plane felt when they came to his workshop to discuss a new commission, or to examine a job in progress, and saw it on his workbench.... Was a marketing statement being made? Was subtle evidence of the craftsman's skill casually on display?
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