Angle of repose

Charles Osborn Makes Beautiful Table Using 5,000 Pieces of Varied Kinds of Wood from All Over the World

From The Livonia Gazette, November 25, 1943

Charles Osborn may be 73 years old but that he is still young in ideas of beauty can be readily seen in the table made by him and now on display in one of Reed & Reed's windows.

Mr. Osborn, who lives with his daughter, Mrs. Harold Harvey, at Conesus lake, has for many years had a hobby of making beautiful articles of furniture.  From a firm in New York he is able to obtain wood from Brazil, Africa, India, China, Peru, in fact from almost every country in the world, and from this wood -- balsa from India and Peru, white holly from New Zealand, lace wood and satin wood from Australia, zebra wood from India, tulip wood from China, and ebony from Africa -- are his articles of furniture produced.

In the table on display in the Livonia store, he has put 5,000 different pieces and 140 hours of labor. The wood is left in its natural color with no stain applied and then rubbed to a smooth satin finish. The base of the table is made of ply-wood, with the different kinds of wood set in to form a pattern, which Mr. Osborn carries throughout on the table.

The pattern of harmony produced by Mr. Osborn and the strength and beauty of the finished product brings a picture of what it would mean, if all the countries from which this wood was originally obtained, could be as closely and strongly united.

End of article. Flash forward to 2011. I thought that a very graceful end to the article, by the way.

Just sorting through ironies here.

Born a bastard, after what had to have been a humiliating childhood, after losing his first child before it was born, after becoming at age 29 a widower with two small mouths to feed, it appears that Charles lived on, made it through the depression, and lived through two thirds of World War II. From various sources, I've learned that he married again. He found a career as an insurance agent. He lived in Irondequoit, New York.  At some point, he shot his grandson, but that's a separate story.

It seems that he came to an angle of repose, living in his daughter's home. His daughter, whom he couldn't or didn't take care of when she was very little, took him in.  Floss was a great cook and home maker, the kind who did a lot of canning and pickling.  He had it made: breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks.

Near the end of his life, the cards went up in the air, the world went to war. His grandson, his namesake, joined the army and nobody knew if he'd come back. Maybe because it was time (he had earned retirement), maybe because his wife died, maybe because he was weary, lonely, and afraid, Charles found his way home to Conesus Lake, his ancestral stomping grounds. He spends his remaining oxygen applied to an effort to piece things together. 

That table, his masterpiece (besides Harry), was left to his daughter, Floss, who gave it to my parents as a wedding gift. I grew up with it. We didn't know from art.  At some point, someone decided that it would better serve as a coffee table. Following a period during which it was the ideal size for me and my sister to sit on, it came to a end.

 

You know what happens to rickety coffee tables. After one too many drinks on top of that, this Livonia Gazette-worthy work of art, now existing in time and space only here, became an embarrassment. I believe my parents threw it out.

I wish I'd been a better photographer but in 1977,

this lighting (see the light?) was the best I could do

 

when Aunt Floss brought out this photograph of
her father, my great-grandfather, Charles Osborne.

An example of his craftsmanship would be its frame.