Meal Bench c. 1937

This Meal Bench was conceived by George Fairbanks, though we don’t know exactly when. The drawing shows a simple structure built from planks and roughly hewn legs. What’s most interesting is that the image is, in fact, a design rendering. It evokes the Shaker aesthetic, in which plainness was next to godliness, but it also presents a set of instructions. The bench would have been made with basic woodworking tools – saw, plane, perhaps a drawknife to shape the legs. The entire object comes down to joinery, how the parts meet. Note that the legs are tenoned through the tabletop and secured with wedges. Though the design is straightforward, it takes skill to execute. We could think of this bench as a vernacular design: that is, a prototype developed by an individual, but equally a product of collective knowledge. It shows us how design ideas can be shared and adapted, always retaining a sense of utility and the maker's touch.