Timber Framing in history marks the start of using hewn square beams, which are logs with the rounded sides knocked off. This effort in turn spurred ideas of how to construct quality strong wood architecture, one of the ideas being mortise and tenon joinery. However the complex and whimsical timber framing is not seen in history till much later, but a form of timber building called post and beam, which isa sort of stacking on top of each other, is seen in the earliest of architecture.
I was intrigued to learn about and practice timber framing because I was curious about how materials came into being. Before wood is wood its a tree, and before metal is metal its ore found in rocks. It sounds simple, but the arduous and passionate effort exuded by the early craftsmen and woman of the world is something incredibly mysterious to our current culture of high techno' dependancy. I have nothing against technology itself, but I will admit that I have a lot to say about the way it is being used today.
I spent over two months a couple hours at a time cutting the 112 tenons and carving the 102 mortises. Each joint is joined by a wooden peg, there is no glue or nails. The process got me thinking a lot about what time means. You have to let go of this obsession of finishing the project. I had to dig deeper to find some other force to motivate me to get out there cut and carve repeatedly for hours. I would lose myself thinking about my ancestors and what they might have thought about their connection to the land. I am definitely prone to romanticizing the old world for being something dynamically sound and balanced. However, much of the old world is depicted as being something that we want to get away from. Or that our Ancestors were limited in their humanity. I would argue that there is truth in this paradox and then quickly assert that there was something crucial to our human growth left behind in the industrial/technological revolution.
