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Andre Roubo’s 18th century five-volume masterwork on woodworking, “L’Art du Menuisier,” needs to be translated to English. The little snippets I’ve picked up here and there are tantalizing and useful even to modern-day woodworkers.
As some of you might know, I’ve been working with Bjenk Ellefsen, a French-speaking reader, to begin translating the volume on carpentry and construction, but it has been slow-going for us (what with day jobs, families and woodworking hobbies to nurture).
To my great surprise, I recently was contacted by Jack Metcalfe , a practicing marqueteur living in Leeds, England , who has been working on translating the volume on marquetry with the help of a retired Scottish school teacher, Ms. Beatrix Wickens. She has completed the initial translation of that volume and they are now sorting out the technical language to polish the language. (The photo above is of one of their translation sessions together.)
The plan is eventually to publish this volume (and others) as a public service for the woodworking community. Here’s where you can help. We need to find someone who has copies of the Roubo volumes that are more than 70 years old in order to reproduce the images from the books and comply with a variety of copyright laws.
If you have a first or second edition of Roubo, or if you know someone who does, could you contact us? While the commercial aspects of a project like this are minor for all involved, you would be doing a great service to the modern woodworkers in helping to bring this translation back into print.
You can contact Jack directly through his web site: the-marquetry-course.net
