Make a Joint Stool from a Tree, Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee (book)

Make a Joint Stool from a Tree: An Introduction to 17th-century Joinery by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee, Lost Art Press. For more than two decades this unlikely pair, an attorney in Baltimore and a joiner at Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts, pieced together how 17th-century furniture was built from a handful of written sources, tool marks on surviving pieces and endless experimentation.

The book starts in the woodlot, wedging open green oak, and ends in the shop mixing your own paint from pigment and linseed oil. It covers every step so clearly that even beginners can build a joint stool, an iconic 17th-century form. Joint stools are made from riven, not sawn, oak with turned, angled legs, aprons and stretchers joined with drawbored mortise-and-tenons and no glue, and a seat pegged to the frame.

The book covers:
Selecting the basic tool kit
Processing green oak: splitting, riving and drying
Joinery and mouldings: hand-cut mortises and tenons, mouldings with shop-made scratch stocks
Turning period-appropriate details
Drawbored joints that last for centuries
Finishing with your own pigment and linseed oil paint

It is the follow-up to Alexander's 1978 book Make a Chair from a Tree. The 128-page full-colour book has more than 200 photos in a 9" × 12" format, sewn and bound in dark blue cloth with a dust jacket. Jennie Alexander (1930-2018) was an attorney, green chairmaker and jazz musician. Peter Follansbee reproduces 17th-century joined furniture using only hand tools.