Many visitors to the Ryan living room, going back to the early 1960s, would have noticed, conspicuous in a corner of the floor, a heavily weathered piece of dark brown old timber—perhaps a small bit of firewood dropped on its way to the grate? It was about fifteen inches long, and squared off to about four or five inches, and might have been the top of an old fence post, cut into handy lengths to serve the family finally against a winter’s cold. Closer inspection showed it to be something slightly more elaborate. Over a hundred years ago, a skilful…