Frames and supports in 15th and 16th-century Southern Netherlandish painting

MATERIALS AND MEN 15 71. Blais 1947, 181. 72. D’Haenens 1984; Dollinger 2001. 73. Calculated by Michael Lomax (2 × width board) + 10 cm heart which cannot be used) × π (3.142). quarters and rough-cleaned using a side-axe and adze. The Baltic oak was initially split, not sawn. Splitting was the best means of cutting oak to size. Oak, which is fissile especially in the radial direction, lends itself well to splitting, especially when it grows slowly, regularly and without knots, as was the case with oak from the Baltic. The natural arrangement of the fibres and medullary rays of the split wood provided strength and stability. The fibres and vessels were not cut through and the wood retained its full strength. 71 In less than a short winter’s day a tree was cut into blocks of wood, rarely more than 3 metres long and 30 cm wide. In spring the quarters were floated as rafts to a collection point along a river. From there, traders engaged boatmen to carry the oak blocks to a major port. After sometimes hundreds of kilometres and over a week of river travelling, the wood was unloaded in a port of the Hanseatic League 72 where wholesalers discussed prices, depending on the size and quality of the pieces. Standard practice appears to be that these quarters were further split to arrive at 16 wedge-shaped segments, either before or after shipment to the Low Countries. Depending on the diameter of the tree and the initial rough-cleaning, these would have an outer edge of up to 12.5 cm for a 30 cm wide board and 9.5 cm for a 20 cm board, and an inner edge of 2-3 cm. 73 Here are the tools that woodworkers probably used. The irregular faces or sides of the wood were equalized with a side axe with a short handle angled away from the head to protect the hands, and used vertically. The blade does not dig into the wood, but is run along the surface to remove large chips that can be the size of a hand. The four edges of each block of wood are also trimmed with this tool. After this an adze was used to flatten the surfaces. It has a long handle with an axe-head placed perpendicular to it. The block of wood is laid on the ground and the woodworker cuts it lying horizontal between his legs. The slightly curved head cuts a hollow cavity followed by torn wood, producing a waved effect. For this reason the surface of wood worked with an adze is less regular than that of wood worked with a side axe.