Book Review: A Museum of Early American Tools

Toolin’ Along
A Museum of Early American Tools, Eric Sloane (1964)

Connecticut museum visit #541.

This is a first. 541 Connecticut museums into this decades-long project and I’m calling a book I just read a museum.

Which is ridiculous. Absurd. Ludicrous.

The book was written by Eric Sloane, one of the luminaries of the Connecticut museum world. Out in Kent, The Eric Sloane Museum & Kent Iron Furnace is operated by the state of Connecticut to showcase Sloane’s original artwork, a reproduction of his studio, and his collection of early American tools. He’s also buried there.

Sloane was a leading light of American history, through his art, his collections, his writing, and his knowledge. The guy personified America.

How so? Sloane was born Everard Jean Hinrichs. He changed his name after his painting instructors George Luks and John French Sloan suggested young students paint under an assumed name so that their early inferior works would not be attached to them. He chose the first name “Eric,” as a nod to “America” and the last name “Sloane” in honor of his greatest mentor.

The dude named himself after America. But none of that makes a book a freaking museum. But this does:

Museum.

A 106-page museum.

I’ve not been to the Eric Sloane Museum yet, but now I want to more than I have in the past. Sloane was a bit of a polymath. An accomplished painter who began his career painting rustic landscapes in the tradition of the Hudson River School.

He spent a year in Taos, New Mexico, where he painted western landscapes and particularly luminous depictions of the desert sky. In his career as a painter, he produced over 15,000 works. His fascination with the sky and weather led to commissions to paint works for the U.S. Air Force and the production of a number of illustrated works on meteorology and weather forecasting. Sloane is even credited with creating the first televised weather reporting network, by arranging for local farmers to call in reports to a New England broadcasting station.

That’s weird. Let’s get back to this “museum” book and what Sloane is probably more well known for here in Connecticut.

He wrote and illustrated scores of books on Colonial-era tools, architecture, farming techniques, folklore, and rural wisdom. Every book included detailed illustrations, hand lettered titles, and his characteristic folksy wit and observations. He developed an impressive collection of historic tools which became the nucleus of the collection in the Sloane-Stanley Tool Museum in Kent, Connecticut.

Since this page is also a book review, let’s quickly review this museum.

It’s eminently readable. Which you probably believe about as much as you believe this is a museum.

But here’s the thing – it is eminently readable. Do you think I’m some sort of antique tool nerd? I’m not. Sloane has the ability to appeal to both antique tool nerds and casual readers like me. He keeps his descriptions short, sprinkles in some interesting historical facts, drops a few folksy jokes here and there, and complements each page with beautiful pen and ink sketches.

Did you know the claw hammer has remained basically unchanged since 70 AD? But that axes and adzes were unique to the owner for centuries based on handle preferences? That Maine axes were different from, say, Connecticut axes. The evolution of tools has clades and branches just like biological evolution. Fascinating, really.

Making holes is also fascinating:

The largest section of this museum is the planes section. The tool, not the aircraft. Back in the day, there were a million different kinds of planes, each with a specialized job. With no machinery to planes boards, and with tastes wanting more detail and bevels, and more fitted pieces to build more things in America, planes became a thing.

A big thing. I just remembered that I “read” a book all about planes written by Andy D’Elia who owns and oversees a museum: The D’Elia Antique Tool Museum in Scotland.

That’s correct: A museum in Scotland (Connecticut, not Great Britain) that features a massive collection of planes (tools, not aircraft).

Sloane romanticizes the past quite a bit, and leaves museum visitors (that is, readers) with the idea that every tool made 200 years ago was better than anything being made today. That is a ridiculous notion. There were millions of junky tools that didn’t survive the test of time – and there were surely terrible carpenters and tool makers then as well. But we don’t hear about them at all in Sloane-World.

But that’s okay. We can all use a little romance in our lives.

Sloane, who passed away in 1985, wrote a lot of books and I guess his most famous is A Reverence for Wood which is not about me, but rather about actual wood. His paintings hang in many museums and his own museum in his honor in Kent is large and impressive.

And sometimes it’s just nice to “visit” a “museum” lying in one’s own bed.