De Facto Apprenticeship, Fine Woodworking Design Book Six
There are no anointed master, apprentices or journeymen at the Irion Company in Christiana, Pennsylvania. Nevertheless, learning takes place on the job, through an osmotic process that may come as close to traditional apprenticeship as anything that goes by the name today. Irion specializes in custom-built reproduction furniture. They use broad flitches of Western walnut, local cherry and tiger maple in their tables and case goods, and they take pains to apply all the right details and hand-tooled features. “The key to 18th-century furniture making is dovetails,” Bert Irion says. “You have to be proficient and you have to be quick. You have to be able to make the furniture and make a living. It’s very easy to price yourself out of this market.”
Irion learned woodworking from his father, and he started the company in 1977. Now, Irion manages the business, procures and selects lumber, and Chris Arato (shown below) is in charge of the shop. Few employees have been formally trained, but all are encouraged to develop their skills by working on their own projects. They set their own hours – there is no time clock – and the shop is available evenings and on weekends. Irion often provides wood at no charge. “Part of what keeps them here is the work and the opportunity to move up,” Irion says. “But if their work isn’t up to snuff, they’ll tread water until it is.”
Gerald Martin (shown above right) was a quick study. He joined the company almost eight years ago, with four years of experience in a Virginia cabinetshop. But his work was so rough that Irion started him stripping and sanding furniture, sweeping floors and making deliveries. After six months he began doing repairs and then graduated to making stools, benches and small tables. His big break came literally by accident, when one of the other cabinetmakers maimed his hand on the table saw and Martin stepped in to meet the deadline. “Good for me, bad for him,” says Martin.
“Gerald is the company workhorse,” Arato says. Martin recently finished four block front chests and spent 14 hours dovetailing drawers the day before my visit. A hastily scribbled list of pieces he built last year fills both sides of an envelope and reads like an estate inventory: 23 chests and lowboys, 8 high chests, 40 chairs, and assorted mirrors, night stands, and tables. “I took a lot of time off last summer, too,” Martin adds.
“It’s not that hard to make this furniture,” Irion says, “but it does take time [to learn].” The skills can be acquired at a number of fine craft schools, but when Irion hires “educated” woodworkers he’s usually disappointed. “It’s like reading the last chapter of a book first, and then going back to read the rest,” he explains. “They come out thinking they’re cabinetmakers, but the fundamentals just aren’t there.” Irion has also hired 19-year-olds straight out of high school as well as mature, career-change types, but he prefers young, unmarried workers with some trade experience and no distractions. Some of his most successful hires came out of vocational training programs.
The work itself can be the best teacher. Before Arato started building the Newport secretary shown on the facing page, he and Marin and Mike Vesey (a new employee who works closely with Martin) set off to Rhode Island to study the original. Measuring and drawing such a sophisticated piece and then figuring out how to quote it and build it would amount to a master’s thesis for most woodworkers; the result would demonstrate their grasp of proportion, design and construction. Like much of the work that comes out of the shop, the actual building was a collaboration. One fellow carved the shells, another dovetailed the drawers and a third made the hardware. “I put it together,” Arato says, “but everyone has had input.”
Doling out responsibility pays off. Irion figures he has five or six de facto “masters” in the shop, any one of whom can make a measured drawing from a photo of a complicated 18th-century piece and then build it. To get to that point isn’t easy, but as far as Irion is concerned, “The best thing you can do is find a good shop that’s willing to train you.” The rest is practice.