
Tiny, Perfect Staircases Made by French Woodworkers - Erlangolem
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/compagnons-tiny-staircases-models
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fotbr
I know it's in "flyover country" for most of you, but if you ever find
yourself in Kansas City, the National Toy and Miniature Museum [0] has exhibit
after exhibit of miniature woodworking (and miniature ceramics, and miniature
metalworking and miniature textiles, etc) that is well worth the $5 entry fee.

[0][http://www.toyandminiaturemuseum.org/](http://www.toyandminiaturemuseum.org/)

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madcaptenor
Is there good barbecue nearby? (I'm only half joking.)

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wmeredith
Q39 is a nine minute drive from there and it's arguably one of the top three
barbecue joints in town at the moment–this is always a hotly contested topic
locally, but I'll go to the mattresses for their burnt ends and/or smoked
sausage[0]. The toy and miniature museum itself is right next to UMKC campus
just south of The Country Club Plaza, making the plaza a ten-minute walk. Jack
Stack BBQ is on the Plaza, while not the best in town it is quite good,
probably top 10. It's more about the sides than the meat if that's your thing.
Their cheesy corn bake and hickory pit beans are to die for. There's also
about a fifty other shops, bars, and restaurants on the plaza, too.

[0] No affiliation, just a fan.

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bambax
> _a Secret Society of French Woodworkers..._

One of my great grandfathers was a Compagnon ( _couvreur_ : slater). He made a
table with a single piece of slate of 2m diameter and maybe 5cm thick, on top
of a medieval column marquee (taken from a church that was being renovated).
The table is in my garden, it's beautiful.

As for the society, there has never been anything "secret" about it --- maybe
some specific rituals, I'm not sure, but the fact of being a member is very
public: it's actually the whole point.

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cmpb
That's awesome! Do you have any pictures of the table/garden available online?

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buserror
My brother is a companion stone carver. He's always there when there is an
historical monuments to repair, as most insurance companies insists the work
is done by them.

he's full of cool stories, and taught me quite a few cool tricks, like how to
'listen' to wood when taping it with the handle of a screwdriver to 'hear' if
it's still green and/or has faults/cracks.

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ruricolist
How does the trick with the screwdriver work, exactly?

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ggg9990
Water content drastically changes the acoustic transmission properties of
porous materials. A tap with a screwdriver is pretty close to a pure impulse,
which means it contains all possible sound frequencies overlapped. By tapping
wood, listening to it, and then cutting it open, you an learn a correlation
between the sound and the water content of the wood and avoid cutting wood too
early or too late.

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nkrisc
If you like this sort of thing and find yourself in Chicago, the Art Institute
of Chicago has a room of 68 fully-furnished miniature rooms all in different
period and architectural styles. They're pretty impressive and kids tend to
love them also.

[http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/thorne](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/thorne)

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mcmatterson
This reminds me a lot of the father in 'All the Light We Cannot See', building
their neighbourhood in miniature for his blind daughter to learn from. As a
novice woodworker and obsessive builder of all things small and useful, I find
small scale construction like this fascinating. To have spent so much effort
on something so devoid of practical use seems impossible for the era.

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chiph
The American College of the Building Arts was founded with the Compagnon model
in mind, and was mentioned in a linked article.

They offer four-year liberal art degrees in Architectural Carpentry,
Architectural Stone, Classical Architecture, Forged Architectural Ironwork,
General Education, Masonry, Plasterwork, and Timber Framing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqqomuL-64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNqqomuL-64)

[http://americancollegeofthebuildingarts.com/](http://americancollegeofthebuildingarts.com/)

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eps
Fascinating, but not a single photo of a staircase model from this or 20th
century...

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outsideoflife
I guess that is partly because of changes in architectural tastes. Large
staircases in grand houses are more as likely to be concrete or steel today. I
suspect most woodworkers would never be asked to create something like that
today, so perhaps there is no way to learn it?

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GuB-42
Most compagnon masterworks are a show of skill rather than practicality.
Staircases are typically chosen because they are a recognizable item and
involve most of the techniques required to be a master craftsman.

Compagnons in other professions don't have the luxury of having everyday
objects that work well as a show of skill. Plumbers masterworks, for example,
usually look like an intricate mess of pipes with no purpose. It doesn't speak
much unless you know the trade.

Another thing to realize is that compagnons are not any workers, they are
masters. Maybe few people want grand wooden stairs today, but some people do,
and compagnons are the ones who are getting the job.

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eumenides1
“Glory be to Work and Scorn upon Idleness—Work and Honour, this is our
wealth.”

What a quote!

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TheMagicHorsey
This is great. It perfectly fits the scale of the space that I can afford to
buy in San Francisco. Now if I can just shrink my body we will be set.

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hristov
For those of you in Los Angeles you can see some of those tiny staircases in
the wonderful weird museum of jurassic technology. The tiny staircases are
displayed on the wall of one of the museums actual staircases.

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oelmekki
Actually, the world have inherited something well known from compagnons : the
word "chef d'oeuvre". It's translated as "masterwork" in this article, but
it's something a bit more specific for compagnons : any compagnon is supposed,
at the end of their "compagnonage" (companionhood) to realize their
chef-d'oeuvre, the piece that should be the best thing they'll ever do in
their live and that will be used as a rite to end their education. It's their
thesis, on some sort.

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ranit
TIL that chef-d'oeuvre has such origin. Thank you.

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UweSchmidt
We need this for programmers.

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dave84
We already do, a four degree and a final year project.

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UweSchmidt
The equivalent of a miniature staircase, perfected and fascinating for all
future generations would be what, in software? Few final year projects would
fit that description.

We have a hard time even imagining or, if it exists, celebrating those rare
pieces of code.

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chrisseaton
> The equivalent of a miniature staircase, perfected and fascinating for all
> future generations would be what, in software?

A perfectly written little compiler or interpreter, a little database?
Something like that?

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saalweachter
It needs to be something that non-practitioners can also appreciate.

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nshm
I recommend to everyone tied of social networks and coding to try to build a
wooden ship model. It takes about a man-month. This one is very detailed
[https://www.ebay.com/itm/Brigantine-Phoenix-1-72-wooden-
kit-...](https://www.ebay.com/itm/Brigantine-Phoenix-1-72-wooden-kit-ship-
model-Master-korabel-MK0401/222881849754) and does not require any special
skills.

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klenwell
For those of us who are a little lazier or less meticulous but want to
experience something like this, I recommend the Lego Architecture series. I
enjoyed this one and it makes a nice little display piece for my home:

[https://shop.lego.com/en-US/Fallingwater-21005](https://shop.lego.com/en-
US/Fallingwater-21005)

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zokier
On the other hand, if you want to sink endless hours to model building that is
also possible in the other end of the spectrum. I find this video series quite
inspirational, I hope one day if/when I retire I can do similar thing:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8tSfy0KJks](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8tSfy0KJks)

He also has another video on a smaller boat which bit less intimidating and
actually makes this sort of modelbuilding to look almost feasible.

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bostonpete
> Measuring only a few inches in height, they are self-supporting, graceful,
> and impossibly delicate.

Every example shown in the article is 2.5-4 feet in height...

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DanBC
The first is just 20 inches tall, which is less than 2 feet.

The Second is a bit more than 11 inches tall.

The fourth is less than 13 inches.

The sixth is 19 inches.

And the last is 17 inches.

I agree this isn't "only a few inches in height", but most of them are less
than 2 foot tall.

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lisper
Wow, some of them even have tread wear patterns. Now _that_ is some serious
attention to detail!

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kwhitefoot
It's a pity that the article didn't have pictures of more recent pieces.

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jameshart
Missed opportunity to headline this 'l'esprit de l'escalier'

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benkarst
I don't know why it's on hacker news but it's cool.

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jonbrady12
Having visited France a few times I agree they are the best woodworkers in the
world.

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candiodari
I remember seeing full-scale versions of these in actual houses long ago.

Man technology has advanced for the better. These things are brittle, require
regular maintenance, they are tiny in width (try getting a fridge up a few
floors), ... This actually used to be a pluspoint: when maintenance is
lacking, specific portions will deteriorate : so walking upon them there will
be a circular fault, which your leg will sink into (as opposed to the whole
staircase collapsing entirely). The thing is, this happened to someone I knew
on a yearly basis. It can only be fixed by replacing the whole thing.

And of course, these were actually put into houses sometimes 5 floors high.
Exercise !

~~~
jimnotgym
I think you are confusing the regular spiral staircase with the properly made
'geometric' staircase which most of these models represent.

Spirals are a menace, but a spacer saver. In contrast geometric stairs were
installed in the grandest homes, on huge scales and have often survived for a
couple of centuries.

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pimlottc
Can you explain the difference between a "regular spiral staircase" and a
"geometric staircase"?

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jimnotgym
In a spiral staircase the stairs 'rotate' around a small diameter centre pole.
They save a lot of space but seriously limit access for large items. They can
be useful to access a loft space for example, where you want something better
than a ladder but don't want to lose much floor space below. The small
diameter centre pole seriously limits the way timber can be jointed. Long
lasting timber joints need ways to deal with shrinkage, and therefore are
better with a large contact area. Spirals are better made out of metal for
this reason.

Most of the images here are a much grander form of stair that 'rotate' around
a large stair well leaving a large open space in the middle, which makes it
easy to move furniture up by overhanging the handrail or even winching up the
middle. The well can be circular or elliptical at the turns, and often have
straight flights between. Since building a set of geometric stairs is complex
and time consuming it is unlikely that you will see them outside of grand
hotels and stately homes. It is likely that the simplest ones built in a
traditional way would cost well over $100k. I struggled to find a reference
that explained the true complexity outside of this classic book

[https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Modern_Practical_Join...](https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Modern_Practical_Joinery.html?id=KzNSAAAAMAAJ)

Although here is a basic diagram here showing the curved strings and open
well.

[http://year3shopfitting.wikispaces.com/Geometric+stairs](http://year3shopfitting.wikispaces.com/Geometric+stairs)

Of course it is true to say that either type could have been made poorly and
require maintenance, it is less likely that a common wood-butcher would
attempt the second kind.

Disclosure: I can use the term wood-butcher as in a former life I was
qualified in that area!

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xattt
What is the recent trend of Atlas Obscura articles posted to HN? Do they have
a new social media manager to drive traffic?

~~~
DiabloD3
Atlas Obscura just happens to print a lot of interesting articles in the style
of long-form journalism. Them and Nautilus get a lot of love from the HN
community.

