BUCKINGHAM EASEL


 The easel, shown here holding a large drawing, was intended to support sculptural friezes while they are modeled in clay. It has been through several retrofits to improve functionality and balance, which was getting problematic as each new relief got larger and deeper. When fully extended the easel is about 9-feet tall.

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 Made while I was living on Buckingham Mountain, using my father's workshop in Doylestown, the next town over. The ladder used for the upright was an old one of his that I fished out of the woods at the house over there. It and the casters have a patina painted to resemble weathered bronze. Timbers cut to form the base were salvage from an old carriage house torn down at the college where I was teaching.


 The Walnut used in the upper parts came from trees out back of the house in Doylestown. I was about 16 when they blew down in a storm: one of them caused a bit of trouble when it crashed direct in the middle of Henry's (neighbors) tool shed.
After a week or so of limbing, we sawed their trunks to eight-foot lengths, took our little 11' sailboat off its trailer and drove them, one or two at a time, up to Hunsberger's sawmill north of town. The filagree wrought-iron brackets came

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out of a house demolition in Providence.
 The 7 turned and carved wooden finial bits in the upper parts came from the Edison furniture shop, and before there, from a chair workshop near Philadelphia run by a family from Italy.
Two of the 4 pulleys turn on old VW Beetle throwout bearings. The brass bit at the crest is made up of a door knob and a piece of a fireplace end-iron.


 The flying brace that supports the uprights, seen here newly retrofitted with cross-stretchers.

 
 These are height adjustment stops that fit through the ladder rungs.

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