This is the last big project for “The American Peasant.” What’s left to build? Some shelves, a plate rack and a whole bunch of icons. About half the words for the book are written and now await a much-beloved rewrite.
My plan for the book – and I think it’s doable – is to be done with building the projects and the writing by Dec. 31.
This week I engraved the front of the coffer, and I’m pretty happy with it. I might add some more spells on the top panel so its density better matches the lower panel.
What do the spells mean? After much though, I decided to make the engravings the story of my childhood up until today.
The Legs
I started on the legs. Straight lines are a little easier than the arcs, so they were a good warm-up exercise. The vertical dimension on this chest represents time. So I engraved the legs with the hourglass spell – a simple X in a box. There are six hourglasses. I’m 55, so I rounded up to six decades (also it would be weird for one leg to be missing an hourglass).
I separated each hourglass with horizontal bands of space. These signify – to me – that each decade of my life has been fairly distinct. The first 10 years was mostly my parent’s journey – Army bases, Vietnam for my dad, medical school and finally all of us ending up in northwest Arkansas.
The second decade was filled with our family’s farm. That dream died on the day my parents divorced – a shaking moment in any child’s life. I got the news while on a pay phone when I was working in South Florida.
The third decade is marriage and journalism, and the rediscovery of my childhood passion for woodworking. The fourth decade, raising kids and working at Popular Woodworking. The fifth decade is Lost Art Press.
There is a vertical line that runs through all the hourglasses and all the segments of my life. I call this “the bright string,” and it is what pulls me forward into every new thing, from kids to starting a business to writing this book.
It doesn’t have a name – like God. But it is real.
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