51/42

A moulding plane, or 'plough', has curved and shaped blades to make mouldings in timber, and has been used for decorative woodwork since the Mediaeval period. Moulding planes are sometimes used together as a set to produce a particular moulding. This plane has a convex blade and is one of a pair for making small ridges and furrows in wood. They form part of a set of seven which came from a master carpenter in Winchcombe.

Moulding plane: wood (beech); metal (steel); good condition.

Citation in publication [H. J. Massingham, 'Country Relics' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939)] –' A tool yet more deeply buried in forgetfulness is the "plough", also in the Hermitage, shaped like a carpenter's plane but with a filing at the bottom for making mouldings in timber and indicating by grooves and markings on the beams where the mortising holes were to be made. This came to me, like so many other of the old implements, from [the donor], and with them the old and complete set of moulding plates which the woodworkers handled in constructing the barns, churches, halls, dovecots, manors, priories, abbeys and steadings...// With this moulding planes [the donor] repaired and refixed the oak panelling in Sudeley Castle....[page break]...His foreman...in scraping off the plaster from the chancel walls revealed the mural paintings for which Hayes is now famous...My moulding planes have not only art but history in them and to me now form another link with Gothic architecture and the Hermitage.' (p.68) [for more information see p.68] [see also 51/36, 51/37, 51/38, 51/39, 51/40, 51/41], MERL list / description [Massingham Collection, October 1989] – 'ACC. NO.: 51/42 // NAME: MOULDING PLANE // NEG NO.: 35/107 // STORAGE: '

Wood, beech, Metal, steel