|
Newsletter Samuel Knight Chapter Society for Industrial Archeology Issue Number 7 December 10, 1998 |
In Memoriam:
Carl Borgh
Proprietor of
Knight Foundry, 1970 - 1998
Contents:
This Issue
Upcoming Tours and Events
This Old Flat Car: Railfair 99
Recent Tours
Knight Foundry Progress Report
The Preservation of Historic Skills
The Artisan At Work Web Site
Bricking the Pacific Coast: New Almaden Re-Visited
The SIA and Its Local Chapters
Save Knight Foundry Pledge Form
Contact and Membership Information
Copyright © 1998-2003 Samuel Knight Chapter of the Society for Industrial Archeology
The Newsletter is published
whenever it seems appropriate. Members are encouraged to contribute articles,
letters to the editor and items for the Calendar. The Newsletter, Calendar of Events and Links to IA Websites are
available on the Chapter Website:
http://reality.sgi.com/csp/knight_sia
(since relocated to http://www.sia-web.org/chapters/knight/knight.html)
THE SAMUEL KNIGHT CHAPTER OF THE SOCIETY FOR INDUSTRIAL ARCHEOLOGY IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY ENTERPRISE
Design services donated by Bear River Associates
This Issue
An important underlying theme of this issue is recruitment. The Samuel Knight Chapter is a strong group because of a growing core of activist members. This is as it should be in any healthy organization. Our membership now is six times what it was when we started in March, 1997. The Chapter has carried out an ambitious program of special projects, tours and activities. Just about every article in this issue is an invitation to become involved. As you'll see; there are lots of opportunities for you to get in on the fun.
For those of you who cross over from high tech to old tech, as so many of us do, we have an exciting crossover project, The Artisan at Work, an historic skills resource and archive on the World Wide Web. The two articles below on skills preservation and the web site provide a road map for this project. We believe that this project has potential for truly 'expanding the envelop.' The scope of the content challenges the capabilities of the Web. Be sure to take a look at the Chapter website, too.
In 1998, we have conducted twelve tours! We have an exciting, but tentative, agenda of tours for 1999. Those of us who have taken the initiative to organize tours will not have as much time to put them together next year because of the time demands of other Chapter projects. Organizing a tour is easy and fun and you get lots of support.
And finally, Knight Foundry – a great opportunity for hands-on involvement. We will be designing living history presentations, educational and workshop programs, refurbishing the shop, and producing finished iron products. Now is the time to get in on the ground floor of this exciting living history project.
Two Special Offers
We would like to urge each of our members to recruit one new member for the next year. To make this easier, we are offering a Gift Membership deal for this Holiday Season. Your 1999 renewal plus a Gift Membership will cost only $45. For those of you who have not joined but have received complementary issues of the Newsletter, we invite you to join now.
The Newsletter itself reflects the strength of an active membership in the many fascinating articles contributed since we published Issue #1. Issue #8 will be available bound with all the previous issues for $20. Please send your check to Newsletter Editor Tony Meadow, 20 Pine Hills Court, Oakland CA 94611. We invite you to consider adding your voice in an article on your special IA passion.
Andy Fahrenwald, Chapter President
Upcoming Tours and Events
Anchor Steam Brewery
Wednesday, Jan 20th, 5:30pm
We start our 1999 tour series in a celebratory mood at San Francisco's Anchor Brewing Company. Anchor was organized in 1896 and was the only steam brewery to survive Prohibition. On the brink of closing in 1965, it was acquired by Fritz Maytag. Anchor now produces seven types of beer using traditional methods and styles, with an assist from modern technology to maintain purity and consistency. Anchor recently produced Ninkasi beer, a Sumerian beer produced perhaps as long as 5000 years ago. The recipe was found recorded in a hymn to Ninkasi, the goddess of brewing, on clay tablets dating from 1800 B. C.
This will be a private tour for the Chapter with as much time as we want to ask questions and explore the facility. There will be a tasting of Anchor's wares at the end of the tour and we will adjourn to a local restaurant for a post tour supper. Anchor is located in San Francisco at 1705 Mariposa at the foot of Potrero Hill, corner of DeHaro Street. Coming north on Hwy. 101, take the Vermont Exit which puts you on Mariposa if you proceed straight east at the exit rather than turning left down the hill. From the East Bay on Hwy 80, take the Ninth Street exit, bear left and continue to 10th and turn left, bear right onto Potrero, left on 17th Street, and right on DeHaro. From Third Street turn west on 17th, go about seven blocks to DeHaro and turn left. Please RSVP to Andy at 510 595-5835
IXL Lime Company
Saturday, Jan. 30, 11am
Bob Piwarzyk, our own Brick Bat Bob, an active member of Lime Light, an informal group studying the lime kilns of the Santa Cruz Mountains, will take us to the remains of the IXL Lime Co., which produced high quality lime for use in building materials from 1874 to 1919. Bob will lead us on a hike and explain the operation of the kilns and how lime was produced; we will also visit the Blue Rock Limestone Quarry. Bob is a knowledgeable and entertaining docent; see his brick article in this issue.
The hike is about two miles round trip with hiking boots recommended. If there is a really wet winter storm in progress the tour will be canceled. Bring a lunch and water for the hike. IXL Lime Co. is located in the Fall Creek Unit of Henry Cowell State Park on Felton Empire Road, the parking lot on the right about 1/2 mile from Hwy 9 out of Felton. From the Bay Area, exit Hwy 17 at Mt. Hermon Rd., proceed to Felton (several miles) and turn right onto Graham Hill Rd, merge left to the center lane and when you cross Hwy 9 you are on Felton Empire Road heading up hill. If the weather is questionable, call Bob at 408 426-8213.
The Bridges of Niles Canyon
Sunday, Feb. 7th, 11am
In our last issue Chapter Member Randy Hees reported his researches on the remains of some California's earliest railroad structures and perhaps the oldest surviving railroads artifacts in the west: "the cut stone work of the canyon bridges, retaining walls and culverts, which date to the original 1865 construction" of the Central Pacific's line in Niles Canyon.
Randy will lead us on a walk down the old right of way, currently operated as the Niles Canyon Railway by the Pacific Locomotive Association. This should prove a fascinating first hand tour of the relics described in Randy's article. Randy will present the results of his continuing research which have been adding a great deal of significant detail to the story of the first transcontinental rail link.
We will meet in Sunol and hike about seven miles down canyon. When we are done poking around, we will be picked up by train and returned to Sunol. Wear good walking shoes, walking on roadbed is tiring. Reach Sunol by driving about ten miles up Niles Canyon Road (Hwy 84) off Mission Boulevard in Freemont or get off Hwy 680 at the Sunol Exit. Again, if the weather appears inclement, call Randy Hees at 650 347-5055
Proposed Tours
Yes, you read it right; the Samuel Knight Chapter sponsored twelve tours in 1998! In a recent brainstorming session, the Chapter Board came up with a series of tours which it would be nice to do if someone could be found to carry the ball. (Could that be you?)
Ideas which we would leap at supporting are: a tour of San Francisco industrial archæology sites with transportation being exclusively by cable car; Sandy Kirshenbaum has suggested a tour of one of the last type foundries in San Francisco, but would need help organizing it; historic Bay Area petroleum refineries; the lifesaving station at Point Reyes; the spring water bottling plant at Hunter's Point; a tour of C&H Sugar in Crockett, and, finally, in the definite 'will do' category, a Chapter dinner plus performance of Nate Shugar's documentary play "Voices from the Volcano" plus participation in the Flat Car Project event at Railfair 99 in Sacramento. (See Randy Hees' article below.) And finally, we welcome your suggestions as well, especially if you can help set a tour up!
This Old Flat Car: Railfair 99
Today, most railroad restoration projects take place over many years. On the other hand, the business of car building was time sensitive. A railroad car builder in the 19th century needed to build cars quickly. For several years, the Samuel Knight Chapter of the SIA and the Society for the Preservation of Carter Railroad Resources (SPCRR) have been developing a unique joint program. Called This Old Flat Car, it is a union of Railroad preservation, Skills preservation, and Education. This project calls for the construction of a wooden railroad car, in "real time" as a public event. Next June the program will become a reality, in Sacramento, during Railfair 99, as the SPCRR and the Knight Chapter build two railroad flatcars over 10 days.
We have selected a flat car for this project for several reasons. The SPCRR needs an additional flat car to expand our operation. Flat cars are complex enough to demonstrate the basics of wooden car construction, (mortise and tenon joints, wood in compression, iron (or steel) in tension) yet simple enough to restore quickly and inexpensively. A restoration of a wooden flat car is commonly a rebuilding in kind, where a box car or passenger car calls for conservation of existing materials.
As a test in 1996, the SPCRR tested the idea of a public car building project by constructing a reproduction of a 12’ 4 wheel flatcar used on the South Pacific Coast Railroad’s Centerville branch. That car was competed in two days. While smaller than the cars in question, it still had 80% of the joint work.
We propose that during Railfair 1999, at Sacramento California, we will build (restore) two flatcars. During the course of railfair we will have a crew of 4-5 workers actively building two railroad cars using 19th century methods and tools. At the same time we will have 1-2 docents on hand to answer questions. In addition we plan on offering the public a chance to participate in the project. With supervision, they will be offered a chance to saw and drill the timbers for the car as well as gathering large groups to carry the timbers, assemble and turn over the body.
Tools used will include traditional carpenters tools, brace and bits for drilling holes, hand saws, chisel and mallets for the mortises, as well as a “patent” mortise machine from the SPCRR collection and a portable forge and blacksmith shop. Our participants will wear appropriate costumes.
The project will take place across from the Huntington Hopkins Hardware store in the “Big Four” building at the front of the State Railroad Museum. We have identified two possible projects. Option one is two Southern Pacific narrow gauge flatcars, built in the Sacramento Shops in 1917. One car in now located on the Roaring Camp and Big Trees Railroad in Felton, the other in owned by the City of Los Angeles. These cars are particularly interesting for this project, because they were originally built in Sacramento. Additionally the SPCRR had a need for additional flatcars, and one of these cars would be appropriate on our railroad. The second option is two of three Hammond built standard gauge cars owned by the Nevada State Railroad Museum. These cars were originally built for the Sierra Nevada Wood and Lumber Co. and the Sierra Railroad. In either case there would be iron castings required, which we would produce at the Knight Foundry.
In addition to the car building, the SPCRR plans to bring two narrow gauge railroad cars to Sacramento, a 1880 South Pacific Coast boxcar SPC 472, and Southern Pacific 1882 combine, car 1010. The SPCRR will have exhibits in car 472, while the Chapter will have a booth nearby.
So, how can you help? The chapter will be providing castings, and research assistance prior to the event. Chapter members could help us document and draw the existing cars. During the project, we will need both workers, to build the cars, and docents to greet the public, describe the work in progress and talk about our SIA chapter and its activities. While we have some funds for the program, we need to raise additional moneys, and any leads would help.
For more information call Randy Hees at (650) 347-5055
Recent Tours
The Comstock Lode: Carson City & Virginia City
Kyle Wyatt, chapter member and Curator of History at the Nevada State Railroad Museum, organized an exciting two day tour of the Comstock. The tour group was truly multi-generational and we had a good time! We started at the Nevada State Museum, which features a simulated silver mine in its basement. Our guide, Jack Gibson, was extremely knowledgeable. This is a remarkably comprehensive institution well worth visiting when you are in Carson City. We could not figure out looking at the outside of the building how there could be so much inside. We went onto the Nevada State Railroad Museum where Kyle took us through the collection, restoration facilities and out for a steam train ride.
After some of the early birds met to watch the lighting off of a locomotive at the NSRM Sunday, we started our tour of Virginia City at the Fourth Ward School Museum, a huge old Victorian high school undergoing a remarkably interesting restoration. Kelly Dixon, a graduate of the Industrial Archeology program at Michigan State; University (the only graduate degree program in IA in the country), chapter member and the head of the Comstock Historic District Commission, talked about her work. Her insights into the politics of historic preservation were fascinating. The Comstock District presents some exciting challenges in developing a strong IA component. It was also encouraging to meet one of those rare individuals who is actually making a living in Industrial Archeology!
Kyle Wyatt gave an overview of the railroad history of the Comstock. Then Mark Priess took us on a tour of the school. Again, we highly recommend a visit to this site when you are in the area. After lunch we went under ground in a preserved silver mine shaft, then rode down to Gold City and back on the Virginia & Truckee Railroad steam train.
Some of us went out to the Virginia City cemeteries at the end of the day where we found some amazing old iron work fencing enclosing the grave sites. (Possible reproduction products for Knight Foundry?)
Centerville Horse-Drawn Railroad:
Ardenwood Historic Farm
We returned on November 21st to the site of our founding Chapter meetings. Society for the Preservation of Carter Railroad Resources President, Randy Hees, led us on a tour of their restoration and parts archive facilities, took us through the Monarch butterfly wintering grove via Plymouth gas locomotive hauled train (the horses were taking a rest) and presented a slide show on the industrial archæological practices and philosophy of the SPCRR. A very pleasant day. If you haven't been to Ardenwood Historic Farm in Fremont, we highly recommend it!
Volunteer opportunities at Ardenwood Farm
The Chapter has had a long association with the Society for the Preservation of Carter Railroad Resources (SPCRR) at Ardenwood farm. The SPCRR is now working to complete two railroad cars for display at Railfair 99. The SPCRR is holding workdays the first and third Saturday of each month, 10:00 to 5:00 and the second Tuesday at 6:00 p.m. to ?, as we rush to finish the two cars we are taking. No special skills are required. For more information call Randy Hees at (650) 347-5055
Knight Foundry Progress Report
$200,609 Raised
Pledge Drive Launched
We have "a ticket over half-way across the English Channel." We must raise another $134,391 if we are going to save Knight Foundry. We have raised $40,434 in cash, $10,175 in pledges and $150,000 in a matching fund from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. That means that every dollar we raise from here on out will be doubled by the National Trust.
We have met our first goal, raising a seed fund of $35,000. This money is being used to pay for the work leading up to our acquiring the foundry and resuming operations and programs. That includes an appraisal, developing complete plans for operating the foundry and training and educational programs, and the costs of fundraising. (Any surplus will go to the acquisition fund). We need $300,000 to acquire the foundry, make necessary repairs and improvements and ensure that we have enough 'gas in the tank' to get through the start up period. Of this, we have $165,609 committed. Pledges will not be redeemed until we have the whole sum.
We are making a special plea to our members. Many of you have already given generously. We would like you to help us raise the remaining money by giving us your suggestions of individuals and companies you think we should contact. Please see the pledge form at the end of this Newsletter.
Amador County Fair
The Chapter's Save Knight Task Force booth at the Amador County Fair was lots of fun. This really is an old time county fair. EDGE&TA member Bob Wollin set up a show stopper for our booth. He rigged his one cylinder Fairbanks-Morse gas engine to power a centrifugal water pump via a belt drive. The water pump was used to drive a Knight Water Motor which in turn was used to operate a drill press and drill little holes in a piece of wood. Shades of Rube Goldberg!
We had a very large booth in the grove behind the sawmill and displayed a variety of patterns large and small, showed our video "Pouring Iron" and had four days to hang out, chat and get acquainted with a lot of Knight Foundry's neighbors. A cultural high point was reached when Banjo Andy and musical saw players Lora Change and Richard Lyman played a quartet of old time music with Bill Braun's Case steam tractor providing the rhythm section. The sawmill crew cut repair beams for Knight Foundry. It was a pleasure to watch their team work.
Many thanks to Rolland Matson, Bob Wollin, Dave Borgh and Bill Braun for putting the booth together and to Richard and Melissa Lyman, Andy and Lora, Tom Innes, Alan Langmuir and Bill Braun for staffing the booth.
"Pouring Iron" Book Signing Party
On November 14th, we had a day of tours and a book signing party for David Weitzman. Author/Illustrator Weitzman has produced a series of books for young readers which bring to life a variety of work experiences with an industrial archæological flavor – building the frigate Constitution in "Old Iron Sides", steam powered wheat harvesting in "Thrashin' Time", building a steam locomotive in "Super Power" and now working in a 19th century foundry in "Pouring Iron: a Foundry Ghost Story." In this story, a young boy visiting Knight Foundry learns the intricacies of green sand molding with the help of the spirits of old time Knight Foundry workers. The occasion provided another opportunity for the local community to come together in support of Knight Foundry. Some 200 people took tours of the foundry and we raised another $3000 in the cause. "Pouring Iron" is published by Houghton-Mifflin and now in bookstores. The line drawings in this issue are from David's books.
In Memoriam
Early in November, Knight Foundry owner Carl Borgh passed away. We in the Save Knight Foundry Task Force were deeply saddened; Carl was a good friend and we will miss his stories and his gruff good humor. Carl's love of Knight Foundry was responsible for its survival since the 1970s. We had much to learn from Carl and feel the loss sharply. We hope to make the foundry a fitting memorial to him.
The Preservation of Historic Skills: Roots of the Samuel Knight Chapter
The following article is adapted from a working paper entitled "Overview of The Industrial Living History Consortium." It was the Consortium which re-organized as the Samuel Knight Chapter in March 1997 in order to bring the mission of skills preservation into a wider circle. (The Consortium members in turn had first met at Knight Foundry.) The Overview provides the background of our concern with preserving historic skills, and provides an important context for our work at both Knight Foundry and on the "This Old Flat Car" project. It was drafted by Maryellen Burns, Lora Change, Prof. Leo Dabaghian, Andy Fahrenwald, Alan Langmuir, David Weitzman and Elaine Winters.
Introduction
There is a key ingredient largely missing from the history of technology, industrial archaeology, labor history and the preservation movement alike – the role of the industrial artisan. The achievements of the Industrial Age have too often been exclusively credited to inventors, entrepreneurs and scientists. In fact, many of the developments and refinements made during the Industrial Age resulted from myriad incremental innovations on the factory floor, in the day to day operations of railroads, in the hands-on trial and error of anonymous master artisans, skilled workers and their apprentices and helpers.
As we have dismantled our industrial infrastructure over the last thirty years or so we have left behind, without much recognition or understanding, a legacy of lessons in pride of work, the nature of true technical sophistication, the foundation of excellence in craft. This community of work, the experiences of craftsmen, artisans, engineers, and designers who 'built' America, the specialized skills they developed, refined and perfected - all are in danger of being lost if not passed on soon.
The Industrial Living History Consortium is an alliance of preservationists, artisans, scholars, documentarists, institutions and organizations who share the conviction that the skills and knowledge-base that built our nation are worth passing on to future generations. There is a consensus among us that not nearly enough has been done in this regard and that in fact, we are immanently faced with an irretrievable loss of national treasures of great value as our elder artisans and skilled workers pass on. We firmly believe that in ten years it will be too late to save a host of important skills.
We conducted a series of symposia focusing on the various dimensions of this complex problem. We have organized demonstration projects (including the production of the video Pouring Iron and the development of the This Old Flatcar project) and are designing information age tools to the job of preserving industrial age skills and technologies.
Mission
The mission of historic skills preservation must be to:
• pass on these "endangered' skills, as still practiced by living artisans, to present and future generations.
• document the technologies and communities of work that place the craft of these artisans into their historical and social context.
• assemble a comprehensive suite of preservation, recording and documentation practices integrating traditional apprenticeship processes, established documentation and archival methodologies and new and emerging information age technologies.
• make these resources universally accessible.
Objectives
1. Develop a National Resource Center
One overarching goal of the Consortium's work is to develop a computer based resource linking educational institutions; historic industrial sites; historic preservation societies and organizations; practitioners; museums; libraries; book, video and CD-ROM publishers; and television and electronic media. These fully Internet accessible data bases will include a directory of elder artisans and their crafts; currently operating living history sites; historic businesses and industries; preservation training and apprenticeship programs; research centers and special collections; labor history and union archives; documentary media and archival specialists and holdings; and links to other resources. (See The Artisan at Work, below.)
2. Develop a Comprehensive Methodology
To appreciate these vanishing skills we must in a real sense apprentice ourselves to these masters. Acquisition of a skilled craft takes place on the job in a day-by-day working environment. A true record of historic skills closely examines the educational processes by which they were transmitted so as to document the web of productive social relations in which they flourished. Our aim is to test, synthesize, refine, and disseminate through the World-Wide Web, as well as via traditional publishing channels, an appropriate methodology for preservation – a methodology able to transmit sophisticated technical skills while recording the culture of the work place in which they are imbedded. This methodology will be published as an on-line multi-media resource, The Artisan at Work, also available in a variety of formats to preservation groups of all kinds, students at all levels, researcher and historians.
It is useful to break down the job of preserving this complex knowledge-base into three components: recording, documentation and preservation.
• Recording a skill involves creating a complete record of the process. Creation of such a record may take considerable time as in reality it sometimes takes years for all the tricks of the trade to emerge in the apprenticeship process. Thus training on-site preservation personnel in skills recording must be a key feature of the methodology.
• Documentation denotes the organization of the entire documentary record providing context for the skill. The relation to other skills and technics, work histories, photographs, manuals, all contribute to understanding the place of a skill in the community of work.
• Preservation means actually handing down the skill, hands-on, to new practitioners. "You can't put a skill in a box." Understanding the process of skills transmission can help shorten the learning curve, as can the recording and documentation of the skill, but there's no substitute for hands-on apprenticeship. Here the role of intact historic preservation sites like Knight Foundry is nearly indispensable.
3. Apprenticeships, Train the Trainer, Professional Education
For this special aspect of preservation, industrial archaeologists, oral historians, museum curators, information specialists, engineers, video and still photographers, preservationists and artisans and craft persons must learn to work together effectively in cross-disciplinary teams and relationships to train a new generation of apprentices. Shared goals, language and methodology are essential to this effort.
We must review other educational programs to evaluate effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. We must develop hands-on community and academic educational programs for students, professionals, community volunteers and apprentice craft persons and artisans to provide field work, internship and fellowships opportunities for young people at the elementary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate level. We must conduct on-line conferences, symposia, workshops, classes and seminars with the ultimate goal of linking professionals and preservationists around the world. Critical evaluation of preservation service providers will help drive the process of creating qualifications and standards for preservation trades.
Why is this important?
Neither the organization of preservation skills resources nor the preservation of significant and endangered historic skills have, except in a fragmentary way, been organized comprehensively. One source of our sense of urgency is that the 1950s represented a great historic watershed between the industrial age and the information age. The rise of factory automation and electronic technology brought a host of skilled crafts to an abrupt end. As a result, many of those who achieved mastery of their craft are now quite elderly.
The broad implications of this problem have been eloquently expressed in the recent study of industrial archeology, "The Texture of Industry."
"The rate at which Americans created an industrial society was slow compared to the rapidity with which they are now dismantling it. Already young Americans have lost most of their opportunities to see or experience the transformation of materials into finished products or to learn about the properties of wood and steel or about the handling of tools through personal experience..."
"The industrial experience, incredibly complex, touched deeply the values, art and relation to the land of North Americans. But the popular and scholarly presentation of our industrial heritage has been largely framed in the narrow context of heroic inventors or, more commonly today, of the conflict between "labor" and "capital" established as a social issue in nineteenth century Britain. These approaches are incomplete, and they deal with limited aspects of the texture of industrial life... Americans have much curiosity about their industrial heritage. A better understanding of past industrial experience can help us see the conditions necessary for the creation of wealth and the extent of its costs; it can help us understand the social consequences of replacing old industries with new ones and allow us to make informed decisions about the uses of abandoned industrial sites, it can provide perspective for people coping with these changes."
Robert B. Gordon, Patrick M. Malone, The Texture of Industry, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 3 - 4.
"Few subjects in industrial history have been so surrounded by theories based on scanty facts as the place of artisans' skills in industrial life. The role of artisans in innovation, in the development of new manufacturing and metallurgical processes, and in the solution of the day-to-day problems of production can be obscured by the interpretation of industrial experience in terms of conflict between "labor" and "capital," and by the representation of innovation in manufacturing technology as simply a device that entrepreneurs and managers used for asserting control over the work-place. Such simplistic descriptions overlook the complex texture of industrial work. We will show that the exercise of skills by artisans has always been an essential component of industrial success. One cause of the declining role of American manufacturing technology in world markets today is our neglect of this principle." Ibid. p. 38.
The Artisan At Work Web Site: A Skills Archive, Knowledge Base and Resource Center
The following article is adapted from a grant proposal made by the Samuel Knight Chapter to the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training and relates directly to the preceding article on skills preservation. The grant was not awarded: while it is easy to make the argument that we should save endangered skills, the concrete steps necessary to do that are harder to develop and to communicate. This article is presented with the specific purpose of inviting your participation in moving this project forward. While this is a massive project, it can be launched on a modest scale.
The proposal was prepared by Andy Fahrenwald with the help of Jay McCauley, Maryellen Burns, Randy Hees, Tony Meadow, Elaine Winters, Anthony Templar and Jarvis Rich.
The Artisan at Work will be a World Wide Web based resource linking educational institutions; historic industrial sites; historic preservation societies and organizations; practitioners; museums; libraries; book, video and CD-ROM publishers; and television and electronic media. These Internet accessible data bases will include detailed recordings of skills, a directory of elder and/or skilled artisans and their crafts; currently operating living history sites; historic businesses and industries; preservation training and apprenticeship programs; research centers and special collections; labor history and union archives; documentary media and archival specialists and holdings; and links to other resources.
Many of the elements of skills preservation methodology have been developed by a variety of organizations and individuals over the years. It is the first order of business to integrate these elements and to achieve the broadest possible consensus in the preservation community on standards and methodology. We don't want to re-invent the wheel! The Artisan at Work Web Site will be structured with peer review and consensus process built in.
The methodology must be easily adaptable by field workers; the site will ultimately function as a multimedia 'handbook' useful to preservationists, providing detailed standards and procedures and guidance to resources for conducting training programs, documentation and skills recording.
The conservation of preservation craft skills necessary to maintenance of historic sites will be included as an important adjunct to historic skills preservation per se. The importance of creating standards for the preservation crafts has been highlighted in a watershed issue of the National Park Service's "CRM: Cultural Resources Management" publication, Vol. 20, No. 12, 1997. The broad spectrum of voices from public officials, non-profit spokespersons and private contractors and businesses reflects the depth and urgency of the problem.
Methodology and approach
There are two interrelated methodological sets which will be reflected in The Artisan at Work. One structures the theory and practice of historic skills preservation, the other structures the knowledge base.
Skills preservation is a multi-dimensional problem. On the most direct level a skill cannot be said to be truly preserved unless it is transmitted hands-on from master to apprentice. However, attention must also be given to appropriate methods and media for creating records of skills as practiced and to gathering contextual information relating to the skill. Thus skills practice, skills recording and skills context are the primary elements of our methodology.
The proposed knowledge base structure is as follows. Data can be freely accessed or contributed by visitors. Contributed data goes to a visitor accessible buffer until subjected to appropriate moderation or peer review.
Data is organized in three primary dimensions: resource index, form of inquiry, media type.
• Resource index lists skill, trade, process, tool, material and industry
• Form of inquiry is organized by definition and lexicon, encyclopedia level article, skills record, contextual documentation, learning the skill, skills census and links to other resources
• Media type is organized by text, graphics, audio, video and virtual reality.
illustration
Interface design will rest on top of these structural elements and appear quite different. For instance, a Virtual Reality (VR) factory may be one way of navigating this information. One sees a 'wire frame' overview of Knight Foundry with different work areas keyed: the visitor can take a three dimensional stroll through the machine shop, then approach a lathe within the work area and the figure of a worker may be interacted with. A virtual tool or process may be manipulated by the visitor, video files on DVD of demonstrations accessed, or worker answers to visitor queries, etc. While the data structure is multi-dimensional, the files exist in only one location although they may be accessed by multiple paths. With the development of Java, VR renditions can now be sent to visiting PCs without installing special software.
Archival practices must insure long term stability and security of materials. All files should periodically be copied to laser disc or other stable media and stored at multiple locations. Files of archival or critical significance will be encrypted such they cannot be altered without author approval. This ensures the integrity of the peer review process. Our team includes two encryption experts, Jay McCauley and Anthony Templar.
Video has now come of age as an archival medium, with digital video recording and Digital Video Disc or DVD. The reduction to digital format means that recordings may be duplicated freely without any loss of image quality, and the laser disc medium itself is much more stable than analog tape media. Even if unexpected aging problems arise with laser disc, the ability to store the image at multiple sites in digital formats means that periodic upgrading to future media formats will pose very few problems.
Using DVD, we have devised an innovative strategy capable of effectively incorporating live video and virtual reality environments and objects with inexpensive and readily available equipment (video presently comes over the internet in only a very degraded form and with considerable difficulty). This strategy is to issue video skills documentation records on six-hour DVDs, with navigation tools provided by the web site. This kills two birds with one stone: both virtual reality renditions and highest quality video can be interfaced with internet resources via the Website, and the need to develop expensive CDROM format releases of Archive resources is eliminated.
The Web Site will first be established primarily as a text site, until development and peer review has perfected the general structure. Text materials will be useful to on-line searchers immediately. Structure, language and design will ultimately be different for different language groups, cultures and users of varying populations, (e.g., ten year olds looking for a clear guide to doing an oral history of their grandparents; craft apprentices searching for a particular technique; graduate students doing research papers; local historical societies looking to create skills preservation programs; etc.)
Audiences
The Artisan at Work Web Site will serve a diverse nationwide preservation community as a clearing house of standards and methodology development, an archive of skills information, and as a clearing house for educational and skills training resources. Audiences include:
• Preservationists at every level, by providing a comprehensive methodology for skills preservation, an archive of production techniques and a well organized knowledge base. 'Preservationists' come from all walks of life. The Artisan at Work Web Site will be structured so that it is usable not only by scholars, historians, restoration professionals and the like, but by local historic groups in small towns, high school students, families wanting to memorialize the work experiences of their elders or restore a historic home. The site will provide multiple interface access to information for the broad sector of Americans who understand the significance of their shared industrial past.
• Historic sites, museums, and similar institutions, providing resources for the re-invigoration and enrichment of their preservation and living history interpretive programs, particularly by encouraging the participation of working artisans through both a clear and usable methodological program and ready access to local training resources. An unused blacksmithy is nothing but a grimy shed filled with meaningless odd tools; with the smith at work, the spirit of Vulcan fills young hearts and old with wonder. A principle aim of The Artisan at Work is to support a national effort to re-introduce veteran workers and new apprentices in living history demonstrations to add vitality to the heritage tourism which has become an important economic factor in many historic regions. Heritage tourism destinations are an element in one third of all American tourist travel.
• A comprehensive approach to the effective transmission of historic skills will provide valuable analytical instructional design and training models for many current historic preservation projects.
• Senior artisans, who will benefit by participating in the skilled worker census and thus having due recognition given their knowledge and by being reinstated as respected elders.
Bricking the Pacific Coast: New Almaden Re-Visited
Copyright © 1998 Robert W. Piwarzyk
[Editor's note: This article is reprinted with permission of the author and the Journal of the International Brick Collectors Association. See Newsletter Issue #4 for Brickbat Bob's article on New Almaden.]
Looking back, there were hints of another brick story on that first visit to the New Almaden Quicksilver Mines with the SIA the 3rd of August 1997, but Mike Luther and I were anxious to check out a lead from geologist Mike Cox as to the location of the Guadeloupe limekiln that supplied quicklime for the process to make quick silver at the Reduction Works. We did walk a short way into the old town and saw some of the remaining adobe buildings and the Bulmore House, the "only complete four room, oven-dried brick house in New Almaden, " built in 1854. (Apparently, any incomplete, less than four room, any-other-kind-of brick house does not have a plaque?)
The red brick sidewalk ran from the southwest end of town to the northeast end. Originally built in the 1850s by the company to provide the children of The Hacienda with a mud-free path to school, it now contained, face up, named bricks! More than ten N. C & S. Caught my attention as I had not seen this before. Neither had I ever seen the likes of a single round cornered frog with two screw heads. The frog is an indentation in the brick that makes it lighter and also provides a key that lets the mortar lock the brick in place. Screw heads are impressions left by the screws used to hold the name plate in the mold. Same for a red L.A.P.B.Co. with screwheads above and between the L. and A. and above and to the right of the Co. I noted there was not a period after the C in N.C & S. Can't all these variants drive you nuts!?
The patio at the adobe museum had a few DIABLO and a couple of COWEN and one HEATHERYKNOWE / PATENT / GLASGOW on display in the cactus garden. [Note: The / indicates that the following word is on a new line on the brick.] Mike Cox had mentioned on the tour that an old miner, who had worked in the coal mines in Glasgow, Scotland, when interviewed pronounced this "Heather Now." (The county purchased Casa Grande, home of The Hacienda manager, and has since moved the museum to that location.)
Back in Bonny Doon, California, while up-dating my "life list," I guessed that N.C & S. was N. Clark & Sons, ca. 1927-1942 (ref. Karl Gurcke, Bricks and Brickmaking: a Handbook for Historical Archeology), made in Alameda (ref. Graves, unpublished IBCA manuscript, Brick Brands of the United States, compiled July 10, 1995). The dates disrupted my thinking about the 1850s sidewalk! Seems like "bricking" always causes more work and just brings more questions to the surface.
After 4 1/2 months I'm on my way back to pick up a "Tierra brick" to show at a talk I'm giving. Nice Christmas present! Mike Cox tells me that these were no longer used after 1876, as that is when Scott invented the continuous furnace which could handle ore dust as long as it was dried out first. The labor costs had been 95¢/ton to make Tierra bricks to cook in the old intermittent furnaces, but the new process may have cost as much to dry the ore dust. Scott made five continuous furnaces; the brickyard making 200,000 brick s for each one.
Mission accomplished and having some time to kill (pun intended) I went back for a closer look at the sidewalk. There I met neighbors Mike Boulland and Damion Pantiga. Damion was busy finishing a brick driveway. Needless to say there were many named bricks! PHILLIPS, WEMCO, PREMIER, RAMSAY, GASCO (including some with a 1/2" square "frog" under the S) TCARR, STOCKTON and CARNEGIE. Neither had heard of the IBCA, or brick collecting, so their questions were endless. Mike, a fourth grade teacher who teaches local history to his students, grabbed his camcorder and we made an impromptu video about the bricks found in the sidewalk!
Especially interesting to me were a couple of FERGUSLIE. I had found a rights-hand bat the previous month at the old Samuel Adams' Limekilns in Santa Cruz with ... USLIE or C, but could not connect. The last two 1/2" letters were again faded out but now I had the FERG... back to the books. Then there was a GOVAN / PATENT and I had to look again to confirm that it was not the infamous COWAN. And how about the COALBROOKDALE Co / ?IGHTMOOR! (actually the second line became more legible after Damion applied some acid and a brush). A GARNKIRK and some PATENT --- could this be the one stamped on both sides? Damion obliged be digging one up. Yes it was!
"Where did all these bricks come from ?!" I asked. Turns out that Damion and Mike are two local history buffs who recognized that all these named bricks must mean something, and have been stacking them up for years. They also decided that the old sidewalk wasn't doing any good as it had sunk out of sight. They decided to dig it up and set a new base. They decided that they had to find and use old brick, as any new ones really stood out . The result was fantastic and now Damion is doing the same for other neighbors on the street. They are all very proud of it. Now that they are learning where these bricks came from they seem even more enthused! (Both have joined IBCA)
But where did you find these ?!" I asked again. They replied in unison "From the creek, from the hills, all from here , all from New Almaden, from the mines!" Sure, that would make sense --- after all, this had been a major industrial operation for over 125 years, being in production right up to 1975. Consisting of kilns, furnaces and their waste dumped into the creek; flues, chimneys, powder house , blacksmith shops with forges, company offices and homes with fireplaces, and boilers to generate steam to run the water pumps, to compress air for the drills and to power the shaft houses. All demolished, salvaged, or scavenged --- then bulldozed over. Yes, that could explain this mishmash of names!
I tell them that I'm surprised that I haven't seen a SNOWBALL. They think I'm kidding them! Damion and Mike showed me some special bricks, a firebrick with a race-track shaped frog with BATES. / HEDDON depressed within. More GARNKIRK with PATENT on the other side (who can really say which is the "front" or "back"?). and a common red brick with free mercury globules on all surfaces and apparently permeated throughout. Mike Cox had explained how the furnaces absorbed about 150 pounds of mercury before they started producing, and how after decades of operating a pool of free mercury was found between the furnace and bedrock --- it had permeated through four feet of mortared brick foundation! This led to scavenging the furnace brick for processing, and as recently as the mid-1950s the last standing furnace "consumed other furnaces."
And so another 3 1/2 months pass. Meanwhile I assisted Tom Wheeler, Associate State Archæologist, with a site survey at the Samuel Adams' Limekilns at the newly acquired Gray Whale Ranch State Park in Santa Cruz. where I found a new one, a PATENT / ROBERT BROWN / PAISLEY. In rechecking Karl Gurcke's book for this I found a connection with Ferguslie Fire Clay Works that most likely explains the FERGUSLIE bricks (see pages 73 & 143, "Bricks & Brickmaking," Gurcke, IBCA #145). And on page 58 I found Coalbrookdale, the place name of an industrial village outside of Bristol, England. How sweet it is!
Returning to pick up my copy of the video, I am met with big grin. Damion and Mike's wife, Doreen tell me about the brick she turned. When she said it started with SNOW... Damion beside himself, brushed the dirt off and found their first SNOWBALL! He then showed me other bricks sorted out from what his mother calls their "brick yard." A PATENT / R. BROWN & SON / PAISLEY, a RUFFORD / STOURBRIDGE and a RUFFORD, a GARNKIRK / WARRENTED with a double edged frame around it and PATENT on the other side, a LISTER stamped on the edge and hard to decipher as only the top half of the letters show, a ?BBCo (please, can anyone help?), a W. H. BERRY & Co. / No. 1 / WOODBRIDGE N.J. (has a period under the o in No) a W. HANCOCK, a LIVERMORE / *, a THE DENVER / HIFIRE / FIRE CLAY CO, a RICHMOND, and a HEEDON. The round-corner frog with two screwheads is on the backside of a HEATHERYKNOWE / PATENT / PAISLEY with raised letters in a frog.
Then I mentioned that GOVAN, COWAN and COWEN bricks were similar and that I know of two occasions where COWEN was reported as OWEN and Damion said he know his uncle (now deceased) had worked for an Owen brickyard, but neither he nor his dad could remember where it was located. Tallying up the score card, I announced that we had 39 names for the site (not counting some hand lettered primitives, the imprint of a dog's paw and some large B. KREISCHER / NEW YORK blocks) , and that 18 were new finds for me (bringing my total for California to 273), and that 10 of those may not have been previously reported! Damion replied that he was not putting all his bricks into one walk, but was starting a collection and that he had quite a few HEDDON, and BATES. / HEDDON to trade!
The SIA and Its Local Chapters
[Editor's Note: Author Fred Quivik has recently moved to the Bay Area from Montana. Fred's suspicions are correct: we did invite him to write this article because of his unique perspective as the immediate past President of the Society for Industrial Archeology. Welcome indeed to the Samuel Knight Chapter, Fred!]
It is with a palpable sense of excitement that I look forward to joining the Samuel Knight Chapter and participating in some of your activities. This will be the fourth local chapter that I've had the good fortune to join, and I look forward to another array of local industrial archeology resources and a new group of people who will instill in me afresh my sense of appreciation for the material culture of our industrial society.
In welcoming me to the Bay Area and inviting me to participate in your chapter's activities, Andy Fahrenwald suggested that the first task I take on might be to write a piece for the newsletter describing the relationship between the SIA and its local chapters. I suspect he asked me to do so given my current position as past president of the SIA (my term as president began at the Society's Sacramento meeting in June 1996 and ended this past June in Indianapolis). I'm happy to take up Andy's suggestion as well because, during an earlier term as a member of the board of directors, I served as the chair of the local chapters committee and because of the long enjoyment I have garnered being an active member of local chapters.
I've been a member of the SIA since the early 1980s. In about 1985, some other members of the Society in Butte, Montana, where I was living at the time, suggested that we form a Montana chapter. We sent out invitations to as many people as we could imagine would be interested to gather for an organizing meeting in the nearby city of Anaconda. We were pleasantly surprised to have about 25 people attend, despite the snowy weather that day in March. Sandwiched between process tours of the Anaconda Foundry and the Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railroad roundhouse and shops complex, we organized a chapter and chose Frank Klepetko as our namesake. He was the metallurgical engineer who designed the Great Falls smelter in the early 1890s and the Anaconda smelter in 1900, making a switch during the course of that decade toward a more rationalized design scheme for a smelter complex, which we thought nicely characterized the way Montana, too, had been incorporated into the national industrial economy.
The Klepetko Chapter meets at least twice a year for some kind of touring, publishes a newsletter about as occasionally as the Knight Chapter does, and helps organize activities of mutual interest with the Montana Historical Society and other groups. The largest event we organized was the SIA's 1989 Fall Tour of Butte and Anaconda, which drew about 65 members from around North America. The Klepetko was the SIA's first and, until the Knight Chapter came into existence, only chapter west of the Mississippi. Besides myself, one other member of the Klepetko Chapter makes it a point to attend national SIA meetings every year, although other members attend on occasion.
In 1990, my wife Mindy and I moved from Butte to Philadelphia, she to attend the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and I to work on a PhD at the University Pennsylvania. That afforded me the chance to join the Oliver Evans Chapter, one of the Society's largest and most active. I presented a couple of programs at chapter meetings and enjoyed participating in chapter process tours. During the two summers we were in Pennsylvania, I worked for the Historic American Engineering Record in the Connellsville Coke Region southeast of Pittsburgh. That gave me the opportunity to join the new Three Rivers Chapter. Because of the expertise I gained in the history of industrial sites in the Connellsville region, I volunteered to help Three Rivers organize the Society's 1993 annual meeting in Pittsburgh, taking responsibility for the Coal and Coke Tour of the Connellsville region.
Because of my experience in helping to organize the Klepetko Chapter, the SIA president in 1990 asked me to chair the local chapters committee upon my election to the board. It was then that I began to see some of the tensions that result from the nebulous nature of link between the SIA and its chapters. There always seems to be one or two board members who want to forge a more strict and hierarchical relationship between the national and the local organizations. And some of the chapter presidents want the Society to play a greater role in coordinating the activities of the chapters.
On the other hand, several chapters have their own articles of incorporation and tax-exempt status allowing them to undertake large projects having little or nothing to do with the national organization in any direct sense, and large numbers of local-chapter members never bother to join the SIA or show any other interest in the national organization. In such a setting, then, frequently-asked questions are, "why bother having chapters?" or from the perspective of the chapters, "why bother affiliating with the national organization?"
I am a strong advocate of letting those tensions linger, of letting those questions remain in the air. I believe that there are good reasons for there to be a national organization, but because the practice of industrial archeology is by nature local, there are also good reasons to have local organizations. It is an important service to succeeding generations that we document, preserve, and interpret artifacts, buildings, and landscapes as the physical manifestations of our industrial past and present. Those activities are important to the nation, and the SIA exists to foster such activities. But those activities must occur at local levels, where the artifacts, buildings, and landscapes are found. It therefore furthers the SIA's national objectives to recognize local chapters. If local chapters can be vehicles for the documentation, preservation, and interpretation of the material culture of our industrial society in southern New England or in the Delaware Valley or in northern California, then the SIA's structure of recognizing local chapters is serving a useful purpose.
At the local level, chapters from time to time find it useful to be able to say they are affiliated with a national organization. Usually, though, chapters establish their own local reputations. Once established, chapters attract many members whose interests remain strictly local. The national organization is always standing by, however, as a vehicle through which some local members, with local interests, can find kindred spirits in other locales. The national organization serves this function through its four principal activities: the semi-annual journal, the quarterly newsletter, the annual meeting in the spring, and the annual fall tour. To the extent that local members avail themselves of the national network provided by the SIA, they enhance their practice in their own locales and they enhance the practice of SIA members from other locales who have the good fortune to be able to interact with them. This kind of cross-pollination of local activities and local interests is probably the most important function the SIA serves.
I look forward to being able to cross-pollinate my own practice in the field of industrial archeology by living amongst the members of the Samuel Knight Chapter. I also look forward to finding ways to help other members of the SIA learn from what this local chapter is doing and to encourage some Knight Chapter members to perhaps venture out into the broader world of industrial archeology as it is practiced in Montana or at the headwater of the Ohio River.
I hope to see many of you at a Knight Chapter meeting
soon.
Fred Quivik
Save Knight Foundry Pledge Form
Yes I will Pledge $________________ to Save Knight Foundry for Future Generations
$_________________ Amount you are giving now to help us get started. Checks should be made to The Samuel Knight Preservation Fund which is administered by the City of Sutter Creek.
$_________________ Amount you would bequeath in your will to Knight Foundry:
Please send your pledge, donation or legacy to Samuel Knight Chapter Secretary, Society for Industrial Archeology, 30 Pine Hills Court, Oakland, CA 94611. All donations are tax deductible. If the project does not go forward, unexpended donations will be returned pro rata. To put us in contact with potential funders or for general information call 510 595-5835.
Name:
Address:
City, State, Zip:
Telephone: Home: Work:
Email: Fax:
POURING IRON AD