Tage Frid has passed away. Here is the press release:
MIDDLETOWN — Tage P. Frid, 88, of 303 Valley Rd., and formerly of Foster, a master woodworker, a professor emeritus at Rhode Island School of
Design, and a former school-committee chairman, died Tuesday at Village House, Newport.
A teacher and lecturer for 50 years, Mr. Frid had been a member of the faculty of the School for American Craftsmen, first at Alfred University and
later at the Rochester Institute of Technology before he became a professor and the head of the woodworking and design program at RISD in 1962. He retired from RISD, in the late 1980s, and was named a professor emeritus.
Still known as the “dean of American woodworking” at the time of his retirement, he is best recalled as a teacher of aspiring furniture designers and woodworkers.
His work was not limited to teaching, however, or even to woodworking. Mr. Frid had served as a consultant to the Mystic Seaport Museum, the International Mint and the former Rhode Island Hospital Trust bank, among others; as a designer of mass-produced for the Howard Johnson’s and
Treadway motel chains; and as an interior designer to clients including the Danish government.
He had been a partner in Donovan and Frid, a design and woodworking firm specializing in interiors and handmade furniture. He was a co-founder of Shop One, in Rochester, N.Y., a shop owned and operated by craftsmen, and ESPAN, a manufacturer of small desk accessories.
Examples of his woodworking have showcased in many publications, and added to the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Renwick Gallery, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design.
His altars and crosses have been installed in many churches, among them, the Church of St. John the Divine-Episcopal, in Wickford Village, North Kingstown, and the Episcopal Church of Mitchell, S.D.
“When I’ve made it, I sell it,” he said in a 1967 Sunday Journal interview. “Usually, after a very short time, I can’t stand living with it.” This philosophy drew the ire of his wife on at least one occasion, when during a luncheon party, the movers arrived to take away the dining room set.
Mr. Frid also was the author of a three-volume set entitled Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking, and had been a contributing editor, since 1975, to the
bimonthly trade journal Fine Woodworking.
His long and productive career drew him many awards. He was named a Fellow of the American Crafts Council, for his distinguished achievement, in 1980, and was the recipient of an honorary doctorate of fine arts from RISD, in
1984; the Governor’s Award of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, in 1992; and in 2001, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Furniture
Society.
Mr. Frid completed his education as a journeyman in 1934, after a five-year apprenticeship under master craftsman Gronlund Jensen. He went on to graduate in 1940 from the Vedins School and to receive a degree in 1944 from the Graduate School for Interior Design, both in Copenhagen.
He was the husband of Emma Jacobsen; they had been married for 57 years. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, the son of the late Albert Frid and Camilla Mortensen, he had lived in Denmark and Iceland before immigrating to this country in 1948.
Mr. Frid was a former member of the Foster School Committee, and had served as the board’s chairman for several years.
Besides his wife, he leaves a daughter, Ann Randall of Middletown; a son, Peter Frid of Madbury, N.H.; and six grandsons.
A memorial service will be held at a later date. Burial will be private.
Edited 5/7/2004 1:42 pm ET by cstanford
Replies
Thanks for the write-up. He will be missed.
My favorite professional woodworker.
Always a firm believer that it was the wood you left, not the wood you took off or how you did it. Didn't wax romantic about tools, wood or traditional methods...only laid out the logic of why some of those tradiitonal tools and methods were best.
Never communed over his navel, to my knowledge...it woulda interfered with getting the job done on time and to standard.
God's speed. I'll think of you every time I pick up your saw I so shamelessly copied.
View Image
“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think...that a time is to come when those (heirlooms) will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our father did for us.’ “ --John Ruskin.
Well said Bob.
I was a little surprised that given his long association with FW that I broke the news here. I saw the press release on the WoodCentral 'Hand Tool' message board.
Didn't 'commune over his navel' ---- that's priceless and I imagine very true.
I'm sure had he read a lot of the stuff here he would have thought we were all fool idiots. I have a suspicion that he made as good a living from the craft as anybody in the last 150+ years. He deserved to. Pomp and Circumstance certainly didn't appear to get in his way.
"I was a little surprised that given his long association with FW that I broke the news here. I saw the press release on the WoodCentral 'Hand Tool' message board. "
FWW ain't the magazine I bought Copy One of back in the '70's.“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think...that a time is to come when those (heirlooms) will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our father did for us.’ “ --John Ruskin.
>> FWW ain't the magazine I bought Copy One of back in the '70's.
Are any of the magazines you read the same as they were 25 or 30 years ago?
Edited 5/8/2004 5:19 am ET by Uncle Dunc
No...and part of it is me, of course. Once the articles began repeating themselves after 15 years or so...I stopped taking it. True also for FHB. Woodenboat seems to be the only one I take with the secret of how to stay fresh.
But part of it is also the influence of the consumerism Norm so ably brings to us...along with a certain modern "ennui" toward traditional joinery as taught by Frid.
Having been introduced to Tage Frid in FWW so long ago, I would have expected an early official comment somewhere...but am really not surprised in its absense.“When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think...that a time is to come when those (heirlooms) will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our father did for us.’ “ --John Ruskin.
I'm sure they (FWW) are not ignoring him-they have a long lead time to put each issue out. It's not like Time or something like that. I would bet they will put him on the cover and devote a pretty good section to his life and work. It's only fitting for someone who is still listed as a contributing editor.
Thanks for posting this.
We all will miss one of our finest mentors.
Tage, to you I lift my glass of aquavit, pause and sing a toast to your life.
To Emma: you put up with and celebrated a great man in your life.
Namaste,
Gary
http://gwwoodworking.com/
He was an influencial craftsman and an enduring educator. I hope his legacy lives on with the new generation of woodworkers.
Charles
Thanks for posting. I attended one of his seminars in the early 80's at Highland Hardware. Before I met him, most of my education had come from watching carpenters and trial and error. Seeing his ability woke me to the fact that there was much more to WW than what I had already been exposed to. He lit a candle for me that eventually turned into a raging fire when stoked with the proper fuel.
Regards to Mr. Frid...
sarge..jt
Proud member of the : "I Rocked With ToolDoc Club" .... :>)
Well, now I'm totally bummed. He taught me how to cut dovetails...
In fact, he taught me just about everything I know about ww'ing.
I never met the man -- and worse, I never learned how to properly pronounce his name.
It was some 30 years ago that I stumbled across his first book; at the time, I knew nothing of woodworking, and was only vaguely aware of which end of the hammer you were supposed to pound nails. Over the next few days, I read his words, but more important, I began to absorb his message. Within five years, I left a great job in publishing to pursue this business of making things from wood.
In his straightforward, no-nonsense way, he reached into some part of my brain and ignited a passion that burns brightly to this day. If James Krenov was able to articulate the "romance of working with wood," it was Mr. Frid who helped me understand that with due diligence and effort I could turn a stack of lumber into something useful, worthwhile, and beautiful. I don't think he ever spoke of these things in writing, but he was the first who helped me understand that the simple work of making things with wood was both honorable and satisfying.
Norm Abram is often credited for the great surge in woodworking over the last 10 years or so, but I would argue that it was Tage Frid, along with James Krenov, who laid the groundwork, and made Norm's success possible.
We are blessed to have three books by Mr. Frid, and I am going to pull them from the shelf and reacquaint myself with his message. It is my way of paying tribute to a good man who made a very worthwhile contribution.
thanks for letting us know
PS I've got Books 1 & 2 (in the republished double volume)
what is the title of the 3rd book?
Volume 3 is Furnituremaking.
Incidentally, I believe Vol. 3 is out of print. I've seen used copies going for as high as $80.00...
Edited 5/8/2004 11:44 am ET by RichardR
Thanks for posting. I didn't realize he was that old! I purchased and read his books many years ago and just sort of felt he'd always be around. Then again, I guess he always will be as a result of the powerful influence and impression he's had/made on so many!
Thanks again,
Mack
"WISH IN ONE HAND, #### IN THE OTHER AND SEE WHICH FILLS UP FIRST"
Here is the obituary which appeared in the New York Times:
May 8, 2004
Tage Frid, 88, Woodworker and Danish-Modern Designer, Dies
By BILL WELLMAN
Tage Frid, a native of Denmark who helped revive the art of handmade furniture in the United States, beginning in the late 1940's, died on Tuesday at a nursing home in Newport, R.I. He was 88 and lived in Middletown, R.I.
The cause was complications of Alzheimer's disease, said his son, Peter.
Mr. Frid, who was long associated with the Rhode Island School of Design, was both a highly influential teacher and an innovator whose approach was at odds with that of many furniture designers.
He once wrote that he believed it was important to "design around the construction, and not construct around the design." He took a dim view, he said, of designers who were "so worried about the looks and the sculptural qualities of the piece that they first think about the beauty of the piece and later worry about how it is put together."
Jonathan Binzen, a former editor at Fine Woodworking magazine, said, "Frid insisted that things be made soundly, and contended that once you established how a thing was to be used and chose the materials and the joinery, the design would flow from those decisions."
Mr. Frid, whose first name is pronounced TAY, arrived in the United States in 1948, having been recruited by the American Crafts Council to set up a woodworking program at the School for American Craftsmen, then at Alfred University. He stayed there for 14 years before moving on to Rhode Island, where he taught until 1985.
"One thing I can't stand," he said at the time of his retirement, "is when people who went through the same learning as I did won't pass it on to the younger generation."
Beginning in the mid-1970's, Mr. Frid began to reach woodworking students outside his classes. He was a force in starting Fine Woodworking magazine, whose masthead continues to list him as a contributing editor, even though his work has not appeared in the publication since 1996.
Mr. Frid's foremost writing achievement, the three-volume "Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking" (Taunton Press, 1993), is still in print and remains one of the most respected set of manuals on the subject.
"Check the furniture conservation and restoration departments of major American museums, or the faculty of college-level woodworking and furniture design programs in this country, and likely as not you'll find a former Frid student," said Paul Roman, a founder of the Taunton Press. Some of Mr. Frid's own designs, most of them Danish modern, are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Mr. Frid's education in woodworking was classically European. He was born May 30, 1915, and started on a five-year apprenticeship in Copenhagen at 13. He worked at cabinet shops and then for almost a decade at Royal Danish Cabinetmakers.
The somewhat formal approach of a European apprenticeship seemed to follow Mr. Frid from Denmark. At the Rhode Island School of Design, he would arrive at the dusty workshop in a coat and tie every day, his thick, white hair perfectly combed. He would take the coat off, but the tie stayed on, tucked into his shirt.
Even Mr. Frid's own shop outside the university preserved a certain formality. Hank Gilpin, a former student who worked there and who now builds furniture in Lincoln, R.I., said the day started at 7. Though he was bursting with questions, he said, he wasn't allowed to ask them until a break at 10:30, when Mr. Frid's wife, Emma, would bring coffee and sweets to the shop. Then there was silence until the half-hour lunch break, followed by more silence until work ended at 3:30.
In addition to Mr. Frid's son, of Madbury, N.H., his wife and his daughter, Ann, both of Middletown, survive him.
In commenting once on the state of craftsmanship in the United States, Mr. Frid wrote a fitting epitaph for himself: "In Europe, craftsmen enjoy the recognition they deserve. Here, an effort should be made to put more respect into vocational training. A student taking vocational training may be just as intelligent as a student enrolled in a college program. The only difference is the student has a different goal. I think it is better to be a good craftsman and happy than to be a doctor or lawyer and unhappy, just to satisfy Mom and Dad."
nikkiwood,
Thanks for posting that and AMEN to that last paragraph! My dad never let me take shop classes in HS (I signed up for wood shop one year, he called the school and changed it)! He thought I should be a rocket scientist or something.
This country could really use a different outlook on people who actually create things.
Regards,
Mack"WISH IN ONE HAND, #### IN THE OTHER AND SEE WHICH FILLS UP FIRST"
I agree that there is a special quality to Tage Frid's woodworking books. I'm not sure exactly what it is. Maybe something about being totally practical and non-theoretical, using whatever tool would get the job done best and fastest. A master of his craft.
I just want to post my sincerest regards to all that were effected by Tage Frid and of course to his family. I always encourage those that take up woodworking to explore his books. Unlike many authors of the how to variety of the day, Tage never suggested that there was only one way to make a solid joint. I apreciated that he wanted a craftsman to make a joint by hand, understand the mechanics of the joint, and then make that joint with whatever power tools made the most sense. Never, however, underestimate the value of making that same joint by hand. I only wish I would have studied under him.
Here is to you Tage.
Chet
That leaves a wicked big hole in my woodworking life. The turning point in my craft life was seeing him at the Highland Hardware in 1989, I had read everything by him I could get my hands on up to that point, including the three book set that is still my woodworking bible. I will treasure his autograph in the “Joinery” book even more now. I owe super sharp scrapers and a pragmatic approach to getting the job done to his teaching. He truly defined the term “artisan”.
See http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/pages/frid.asp and watch for more in the July/August issue of Fine Woodworking.
Ruth DobsevageTaunton New Media
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