A theory about the origins of Dutch and English moulding planes

[Kees Heiden]

In the last "Gildebrief" from the Dutch antique tool club Ambacht en Gereedschap http://www.ambachtengereedschap.nl/ was a very interesting article about the earliest Dutch moulding planes found in the Skokloster castle in Sweden. The article is written by Hein Coolen, one of the owners of Ducotools http://www.ducotools.dds.nl/wordpress/ and president of the club.


I am not going to copy or translate the article, because I am not mr. Coolen. But I am sure there are some people overhere interested in his ideas, and because a Dutch article isn't very accessible, I write this short introduction to his theory.


The pictures below are from several Internet blogs:
https://hyvelbenk.wordpress.com/2015...tle-in-sweden/
https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/20...-to-stockholm/
http://oldwoodplanes.co.uk/moulding-...ated-02-11-14/


The incredibly rich General Wrangel had a castel build in Sweden in the 17th century. He ordered all kinds of toys from all over Europe. One of his hobbies was woodturning, like many aristocrats back then, so he ordered a huge amount of tools from Amsterdam. Among the loot were also 64 woodworking planes, delivered in 1664. Here is wat is left of that collection.





As you might know (or not) the oldest know Dutch professional planemaker is Michel Corneliszn born 1581 in Antwerp, who moved to Amsterdam in 1585 and started his shop around 1600. The oldest known English planemaker is Thomas Granford. From 1654 onwards there were three generations and the second generation (1687-1716) seems to be the one who made a lot of planes professionally. With the Dutch being at least half a century earlier then the English there has always been the question if and how much the English were influenced by the Dutch, but because the Dutch planes look quite different, very "baroque" compared to the more puritan English shapes, a link between the two is not immediately obvious.


And then, a thourough examination of the Skokloster planes brought to light the existance of intermediate shapes which make a link between the Dutch and the later English moulding planes much more logical.


About half of the Skokloster moulding planes look a lot more like the later English ones. They don't have the carved details of the later Dutch planes.





Compare this to a typical early English plane, this one from John Partridge





There are a lot of similarities. The chamfers, the gouge cuts terminating the chamfers, the down sloping shoulder. The length of the plane, Dutch planes were never very uniform in length while the English later standardised on 9 1/2", these planes are about 10 1/2". The Dutch complex moulding planes never used a spring angle, and the earliest English ones didn't either.


Differences between the two are the shape of the escapement and the shape of the wedge.


Interesting is also that the carved Skokloster moulding planes haven't reached their later uniform shape quite yet either. This also indicates that this is a transition period in Dutch planemaking.

This theory of Hein Coolen is very attractive. Of course we will never know for sure, unless someone finds a diary of a Dutch planemaker who moved to Londen and teached Thomas Granford, or something like that.

[Kees Heiden]

And here a comparison of the carved planes.


A typical 18th century Dutch moulding plane. This one is made by Ary den Hengst. They all looked more or less the same, with maybe small differences in the actual size of the various details. The later 19th century moulding planes had slightly different nose details, but other wise looked like these too.





And this one if from Skokloster, 1664. As you can see, the nose detail is different, much simpler. And the shape of the roundly carved escapement hasn't matured yet either, it is smaller and less "fluid".





These differences also indicate a transistion period in Dutch plane making.

[Kees Heiden]

I also posted this on the ukworkshop handtools forum and Cheshirechappie had a nice comment about the social circumstances at that time in England:

During the 17th century, the Netherlands became the most prosperous and advanced country in Europe, pre-eminent in art, science and trade. Meanwhile, England was tearing itself apart in a series of civil wars (1640s and 1650s), followed by an uneasy peace, so it developed only slowly.
A close link between the two nations occurred in 1689, with an event known in England as the Glorious Revolution (it wasn't quite so glorious in Scotland or Ireland), when the Stadtholder of Holland, William of Orange, and his wife Mary (daughter of the Duke of York), were invited by the English Parliament to assume the throne of England. The reasons are complex, and somewhat beyond the remit of a woodworking forum (google 'Glorious Revolution' if you really need to know), but take the throne they did.

Whenever a monarch assumes a throne, they tend to bring a retinue of court followers, and they influence the life of the land they rule. So it was with William and Mary - they even had a style of English furniture named after them. I don't know for sure, but it's quite possible that the Dutch influence that gave rise to the furniture style also influenced the making of tools - London was the centre of Court life, and it was also the centre of fine cabinetmaking. The closeness in dates between the arrival of William and Mary (1689) and the rise of the Granfords as planemakers (second generation 1687 - 1716) seems too much of a coincidence.

The 18th century was a period of relative peace in England, during which it developed rapidly in all fields, eventually to the spectacular advances of the Industrial Revolution. Tool making developed along with advances in almost all the wood trades, and as we know from Benjamin Seaton's tool chest, was very highly refined by the end of the 18th century.

[Warren Mickley]

The English certainly had moulding planes before 1581. It doesn't take a full time professional to make them. It would be easier to argue that the French brought the concept in 1066 or that the Romans brought them in the first century. There was an influx of French religious refugees in England in the mid 16th century, many of them craftsmen. And in the 17th century there were English refugees in Holland (like Moxon) and Dutch refugees in England.

[Bill Houghton]

Thank you for all this, Kees. It's always good to see new perspectives on the development of hand tools.

It's my impression that there was a lot of back-and-forth between the two countries during that period - not surprising, considering that they were both maritime powers. But things always change as they go from one place to another, so the evolutionary differences are quite interesting.

[Jim Koepke]

Very interesting Kees, thanks for posting.

At least one of my molding planes appears to have the features of the Dutch molding planes:

Getting Better.jpg

Standardization of length may have been the result of owners wanting them to store more neatly in a chest or cabinet.

As time became a more valued commodity some of the embellishments were likely dropped to increase production.

Chamfered edges likely made the planes more comfortable to use and remained.

jtk

[Kees Heiden]

The English certainly had moulding planes before 1581. It doesn't take a full time professional to make them. It would be easier to argue that the French brought the concept in 1066 or that the Romans brought them in the first century. There was an influx of French religious refugees in England in the mid 16th century, many of them craftsmen. And in the 17th century there were English refugees in Holland (like Moxon) and Dutch refugees in England.

In England from the late 17th century onwards and in The Netherlands from the earlier part of the 17th century, a standard moulding plane type emerged. A standard suggests a professional planemaking trade, and the guilds were usually pretty strict on standardisation.

The funny thing is, the English standard is quite different from the Dutch standards, onwards into the 18th century. But the Skokloster planes suggest that they both stem from the same parents. You can see a logical devellopment along two different lines, and the tow family lines seem to be dividing in this Skokloster plane arsenal allready.

Sure there were plenty of moulding planes before 1600, you find them in many paintings and in inventories. There didn't seem to be much of a professional planemaking trade before that time though and the planes didn't comform to any standard.

I wish we knew more about the early planemaking trade in France or Spain or Italy.

[Kees Heiden]

Very interesting Kees, thanks for posting.

At least one of my molding planes appears to have the features of the Dutch molding planes:

Getting Better.jpg

Standardization of length may have been the result of owners wanting them to store more neatly in a chest or cabinet.

As time became a more valued commodity some of the embellishments were likely dropped to increase production.

Chamfered edges likely made the planes more comfortable to use and remained.

jtk

That plane certainly has some Dutch details but it looks like someone cut of the front. Everything ends quite abrupt at thenose. This plane BTW doesn't have the roundly carved escapement either.

[Jim Koepke]

Wouldn't history suggest that planes, like many other items, moved with commerce?

If the Romans had planes, as their army moved into new areas, the craftsmen most likely soon followed to ply their trade.

jtk

[Kees Heiden]

Here on this blog you can find some medieval moulding plane pictures.

http://thomasguild.blogspot.co.at/20...ne-part-5.html

And a guild table from Austria, 1561. There is rather primitive mouding plane on this one too.