Thinking With Our Hands: A Conversation on Traditional Woodworking, Notre-Dame, and the Future of Craft with Hank Silver

Hank Silver is an American timber frame carpenter who has spent close to two years working on the restoration of the medieval roof framing of Notre-Dame de Paris. Hank was recognized by the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art (ICAA) with an Arthur Ross Award in the category of Artisanship in 2025.

In this interview, ICAA Marketing & Communications Assistant Sammy Zimmerman sat down with Hank (figuratively, as he lives in France!) to explore his perspective on the past, present, and future of traditional woodworking.

Sammy: Would you please introduce yourself and your work to our readers?

Hank: My name is Hank Silver. I am an American carpenter who now lives in France. I previously had my own workshop in Western Massachusetts, where I specialized in traditional timber frame carpentry, that is, post and beam framing, which relies on wooden joinery rather than nails or steel connections.

I moved to France at the beginning of 2023 to work as a lead carpenter on the reconstruction of the medieval roof framing of the nave of Notre-Dame de Paris. I worked on the project for two years, first in our workshop at Ateliers Desmonts in a small village in Normandy, and then on-site in Paris for the installation. I then continued on site working with the roofing crew to install the oak roof sheathing.

The project to rebuild the cathedral à l’identique, identically, or as it had been before the fire, was exceptional for many reasons, but even within this context, the carpentry aspect was unique. The decision was made to rebuild the medieval sections of the roof using the original mortise and tenon joinery, with only a few modifications to satisfy the engineers and insurance, never mind that the joinery had worked for 800 years. Even more remarkably, the beams were to be hand-hewn using broadaxes, just as they had been in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when the cathedral was built.

Among all of the aspects of the reconstruction, only the medieval carpentry went so far as to mandate the use of the same tools, techniques, even gestures, to preserve the savoir faire itself. We did use power tools, and even pre-sawed two faces of the beams on a sawmill to save time, but all visible surfaces were finished by hand, using tools the medieval builders would have recognized.

Sammy: How did you get started as a traditional woodworker?

Hank: I studied filmmaking and was planning to pursue a career related to that, either in filmmaking or film preservation. By chance, I found a couple of books by Eric Sloane that had belonged to my grandfather. They were beautifully illustrated books about early American carpentry and woodworking tools. I was fascinated by the world these books opened up to me, a world that was entirely made of wood.

Shortly after that, I managed to get a job on a remodel crew. I started off sweeping floors and carrying debris. I learned on the job and worked remodeling Montreal row houses with the crew for several years. I eventually learned that in Vermont the traditional techniques were still being used and moved down to take a timber framing class.

Sammy: How did you get involved with the restoration of Notre-Dame after the building was partially destroyed by fire in 2019?

Hank: I was invited by Loïc Desmonts, who at twenty-four years old had taken over his father’s carpentry company, Ateliers Desmonts. His first project leading the company was the reconstruction of the medieval roof of the nave of Notre-Dame de Paris. I had met Loïc and the whole Desmonts family in 2018 when I first participated in Charpentiers sans Frontières, and we had remained in touch. He came over to the United States the following summer for another CSF project, travelled around the northeast of the US, and worked a bit at my shop and on my job sites.

When he initially told me he was bidding on the project and wanted me to join, I thought there was a fifteen percent chance it would happen, but I was wrong. I closed my business, severed the lease on my workshop, and came to France with three suitcases full of tools.

Sammy: How did you get involved in Charpentiers sans Frontières and why is that organization important to you?

Hank: I worked with another carpenter in the United States who had previously been on one of their projects and through that connection, I was lucky enough to get on the crew at the last minute for their 2018 project to rebuild an oak bridge at a castle in Normandy.

CSF was started by an ethnographer, François Calame, as a way to reinvigorate what he saw as the vanishing skill of working wood in the traditional ways. It is an informal group that takes on a project every year, always starting with whole logs and hewing them by hand to convert the logs into square timber. The projects typically consist of the repair or reconstruction of a historic structure or a new building using these traditional methods. The transmission of the techniques is just as important as the restoration project at hand. If historic structures are saved, but the techniques disappear, then our architectural heritage has not been truly preserved.

It is through this group that I met many of my colleagues in Europe. It should also be said that François and CSF were instrumental in convincing the French government that the medieval roof framing of Notre-Dame de Paris could be rebuilt by hand-hewing the timbers and using the same mortise and tenon joinery found in the original thirteenth-century frame. François organized a project to rebuild one of Notre-Dame’s roof trusses by hand to prove to the architects that it could be done, and moreover, done efficiently.

Sammy: What differences have you observed in how traditional crafts are practiced in the United States versus Europe?

Hank: Probably the biggest difference is the European emphasis on a formal apprenticeship. Whereas in the United States, you might learn on the job, as I did, in Europe, instruction in the trades is much more rigorous. In fact, in France you are required to have a minimum two-year degree to practice in most of the trades, even in some trades that would be surprising to an American.

It’s also a much bigger deal to change careers or learn a new trade in adulthood. I have met people who were doing a state-sponsored professional reconversion certification to learn a different trade later in life. When I meet other carpenters in France, the first question they usually ask is where I did my training and apprenticeship. At least in part, this mindset is a reflection of the guild system that goes back at least to the Middle Ages.

A lot of credit for the integrity of the carpentry training has to go to the various journeyworker groups that represent the Compagnons du Devoir. These groups still run rigorous programs for young apprentices, who live and study together in the evenings while working a day job at a local company, where they gain real-world experience. The core of their program is the descriptive geometry drafting technique called stereotomy, or the art of the line (l’art du trait).

Sammy: How do you understand the relationship between art and craft? Do you consider yourself an artist, a craftsman, or both?

Hank: The response to this question could fill a whole book. I have heard simplistic answers like “art is useless, and craft has a use.” I think it goes beyond simple questions of utility and beauty, though these are aspects of both art and craft.

For me, anything can be done with artistry, although, conversely, even some art can lack that element. Craft has an element of utility; it is by definition functional. But craft can also transcend the functional. It can be executed with a finesse, an intelligence, or even a playfulness, for lack of a better word. Both art and craft are at their best when they are examples of inquiry into the world.

Sammy: What are some contemporary challenges that traditional building practices can help us address?

Hank: Traditional building involves people and resources at the local level. There are obvious benefits to working with locally sourced materials and local tradespeople who know their craft intimately, rather than trucking in supplies and deskilling the trades so they readapt to prescriptive construction methods. They may not fit neatly into spreadsheets, they may not add up on an engineer’s computer screen, but traditional building techniques are proven to work.

Rather than understanding the materials we use and the environment they come from, contemporary buildings are made out of things that you go buy at the store, and that are put together by following instructions or guidelines in the building codes. Sheet goods, joist hangers, engineered lumber, plastics, and adhesives make for buildings that can be built quickly and with less skill. There are massive trade industries set up to sell solutions in search of a problem, or even worse, to create problems where before there were none.

One example that comes to mind is that modern materials, and even the building codes themselves, have made modern homes much more dangerous in a fire. In buildings built prior to 1980, an occupant had twenty to thirty minutes to flee from a fire. In contemporary homes, that number is now three to four minutes. Foams, plastics, adhesives, and other toxic building materials create smoke that is much more lethal than that produced by natural materials.

Rather than just pushing the myth of progress at all costs, I would hope to see a more conscious questioning of adapting new technologies or new standards. I’m not at all saying that carpentry or the trades should be stuck in one time period. It is important to evolve. New and traditional ideas can coexist; there are things to be gained from both. But evolution just for the sake of modernizing and without improvement or without rationale is not progress.

Sammy: How can young people get involved in traditional crafts like woodworking?

Hank: I learned a lot through the publications and community of the Timber Framers Guild. For woodworking publications, Mortise & Tenon Magazine is a great resource, as are the books published by Lost Art Press, which also offers woodworking classes.

There are great craft schools all over the United States and the world that offer programs for students of various ages. In the United States, for timber framing classes, I am most familiar with the Heartwood School, now run by the Timber Framers Guild, John C. Campbell Folk School, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Yestermorrow School, and The Shaker Mountain School.

Sammy: What do you see for the future of traditional woodworking?

Hank: In the short to medium term, I am actually hopeful. Working wood with hand tools in particular is immensely satisfying. Wood is a material that is alive, and engaging it with hand tools is the best way to get to know the particular piece you are working.

Most people in developed countries spend their days in front of screens and then go home and sit in front of screens. Nobody actually wants to live like that. I think that more and more, people are growing disillusioned with the virtual and realizing that they are being seduced by something that is ultimately dissatisfying or worse.

Our minds and bodies are much more linked than they appear. We think with our hands. We imagine a house that does not exist and we build it; we see a sculpture inside of a stone and can carve it. Building things with our hands is fundamental to who we are as a species. It is a form of inquiry into the world that has always been with us. We can only ignore it for so long before we either grow miserable or turn into something else.