Traditionally, French carpenters have used scribe framing to design complex wooden structures in three dimensions, or as the carpenters have called it, “trait de charpente.” The scribe tradition allows one to recognize the volume of buildings, an essential quality in the art of building. By learning the French scribe system, one can master powerful symbolic and social practices that have played a crucial role in character representation for compagnonnages, or trade guilds in French society. This knowledge helps one know how to act in the universe and in society in a metaphorical way.
It is difficult to determine the origin of writing, which is a profession unique to France, but related practices have been found only in Japan and Germany. Scribing is considered to be a technical and symbolic art form. Some myths are cultivated by the guilds, that date the mastery of scribing back to the founding myths of Solomon, Maître Jacques, and of Père Soubise (master carpenter). However, for the most part, the first concrete evidence of scribing in French timber framing can be found during the Middle Ages. Scribing, which paralleled the emergence of medieval monasteries, developed concurrently with the construction of Gothic monuments.
The process of scribing allows designers to accurately express a building's actual dimensions, interlocking, and the characteristics of wooden components. Scribing was taught as a separate subject from architecture theory and practice. The carpenter is able to find all the wood components before they are built, regardless of the complexity, and thus can be sure the timber frame will fit together perfectly when it is constructed. Carpenters who belong to guilds view the tradition of scribing as having a secret and symbolic meaning.
Besides being a skill, French scribing plays a symbolic role in the initiation and value system of the companions of the Tour de France. The successive rites of passage in the apprenticeships of the carpenters (novice, journeyman, and confirmed journeyman) borrow from aspects borrowed from the field of scribing. Aside from being a technical skill, the French scribing method represents the gold standard for a veritable vision of the world, one that is specific to the guild world, transmitting its values to other groups. Training centers, maison compagnonniques, and firms throughout France use this method more or less on a daily basis. Normandy remains a stronghold of their work as a result of the tradition of wooden construction, as well as an important historical role played by Nicolas Fourneau, a theorist of the Charpentes Treatise of the eighteenth century.
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