Friday, March 30, 2007

Studley by name, Studley by nature

Back in the mid 90s, I remember picking up a magazine at the military dentist. Airforce magazine or flight international or something like that. Inside was a picture I stared and stared at. It was an advertisement for something, I can't remember what - but I never forgot the image.
It's been well over 10 years and I was chatting to my mate Irish Stu about this tool chest I once saw, and how impressive it was.
Well, after describing it to Stu, I figured I do my darndest to find it on the web.
Using image google, I was surprised to find it within minutes.....so here it is:
The Studley Tool Chest

Massachusetts piano maker Henry Studley built his magnificent tool chest over the course of a 30-year career at the Poole Piano Company. The chest lived on the wall near his workbench, and he worked on it regularly, making changes and adding new tools as he acquired them. Using ebony, mother-of-pearl, ivory, rosewood, and mahogany -- all materials used in the manufacture of pianos -- he refined the chest to the point that now, more than 80 years after his death, it remains in a class of its own.

Considering how many tools it holds, the famous chest is really quite small; when closed, it is just 9 in. deep, 39 in. high, and just more than 18 in. wide. Yet it houses so many tools -- some 300 -- so densely packed that three strong men strain to lift it.

For every tool, Studley fashioned a holder to keep it in place and to showcase it. Miniature wrenches, handmade saws, and some still unidentified piano-making tools each have intricate inlaid holders. Tiny clasps rotate out of the way so a tool can be removed. In places the clearances are so tight that the tools nearly touch. The chest, which hangs on ledgers secured to a wall, folds closed like a book. And as the chest is closed, tools protruding from the left side nestle into spaces between tools on the right side. Amazingly, despite being so densely packed, the tools are all easily accessible.

Studley was well into his 80s when he retired from the piano company. Before he died in 1925, Studley gave the tool chest to a friend. That man's grandson, Peter Hardwick, loaned the chest to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s and later sold it to a private collector in the Midwest. That owner again sold the tool chest to another private collector, where it now resides.

Fine Woodworking Magazine Article (incl High Res downloads)