When I make things for sale – chairs, hammers, tool chests, workbenches, whatever – I struggle with when to let the things go out of my hands and into the world.
Sometimes I think I have two choices:
- Perfection first. I first need to get all the details perfect no matter how long it takes. Then I’m going to get faster and faster at it.
- Speed first. I need to get this project done so it makes money and is acceptable to a customer. Then I’ll achieve perfection as I get better and better at it.
I’ve found the truth is something entirely different. When I make an object for the first time or the 10th time, getting it “just right” is impossible because I have no conception of how good the thing can become in the end.
For example, when I started making lump hammers in our shop, I made them slowly and to what I thought was a high standard. The problem was that my eyes couldn’t conceive of what a really good hammer looked like. So my first hammers were made slowly and weren’t anything like they look like today – to my eye. (Note: Even my early ones were good. I’m not asking to be swamped with returns.)
Same with chairs. When I invited Peter Galbert over for dinner one night I had to look him in the eye and say: I can afford to own only my early and prototype chairs. These things horrify me. Please don’t judge me by them. He smiled broadly and nodded. (I know in my heart he was judging me.)
I’ve concluded that speed and quality are not mutually exclusive. You don’t have to choose one over the other. Instead, I start with neither and end up with both. It just takes time at the bench, the lathe or the belt grinder.
This week I have this Irish chair prototype (above) sitting around the shop while Chris Williams teaches two classes stocked with experienced chairmakers. I honestly wanted to hide the chair somewhere. It’s a mess. But Lucy and I are moving house right now and there is no place to stash it.
Though it pains me to look at the chair, its presence also forces me to see it and develop an eye for what it can become. And that’s the first step to getting it right.
— Christopher Schwarz
You’ve posted about this topic a number of times. Not only does it speak to me, and help me process my own internal conflict, it’s nice to see your progress in digging your way through it, or out of it, or deeper into it. Whatever. Just keep sharing about it. Thanks
When are ya going to release your new book? I’ve been looking forward to it ever since you said you were working on it. I want to make one of your chairs from the book. I probably won’t but I want to read about them. I’m just saying.
Thank you,
Jaime Guerrero
I’m not a chair maker, but I like the looks of this chair. One question, is it comfortable to sit in for more than 20 minutes? If the answer is yes, then I don’t understand your problem.
It is a very comfortable chair, even after 20 minutes.
It can be hard to win distance to that which you’ve made yourself. I don’t think that anybody would say there’s anything wrong at all with that chair. But … if it were mine (and I’d won the distance), I think I’d but a biggish chamfer or roundover on the inside edges of the arm rests as that clear edge does not look comfortable (bit difference as to whether it is comfortable in fact) and I’d on purely aesthetic grounds I’d reduce the degree of projection of the arms behind the staves (bound to be the wrong word for the vertical bits) by rounding them back so they are shorter and look more into the middle.
All of which is living proof of how easy it is to comment on work which one cannot produce oneself.
You are a thinker and a hard worker. An inspiration to many I’m sure. For me, it is always interesting to follow your process. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
In Engineering it is hard to let go of a design go into production. The saying is that at every company there comes a time where you have to shoot all the engineers and go into production.
https://youtu.be/xPJzhocW7vw Tongue in cheeks here.
When you’ve seen every step of a project as it goes together, I find it’s impossible to not intimately remember every flaw. My wife always trys to comfort me by rightfully pointing out that most people won’t notice that ultra minor flaw. But I DO. I wonder, for example, if Peter a galbert had built that Irish chair how your perception would change, if at all, just by nature of being removed from the intimate detail of it being built
Artist’s never value their own work. It is insulation from criticism, and hell, you can make another just like it if you want.
Several years ago i gave myself permission to stand back and look at the completed piece as a whole. Yes, I still know all the (perceived) flaws, but I only ‘worry’ about them as object lessons for the next time I do something similar. Also, I don’t begin any conversation about something I made with how badly I screwed it up. I just say the next one will be better and leave it at that.
There are enough self recriminations while it is on the bench.
Of course, I’m willfully a hobbyist only and would not dream of selling any crap I made to the world at large. 😉
The saying goes that familiarity breeds contempt. I know for me, When I complete something I hate it it is only with time that my perspective softens until one day I’m walking past that piece that I despised and see something I did particularly well and feel this swell of affection for my work. Do you experience that too? or are you always focused on the flaws?
I have found that as I get better at woodworking, the opposite happens… I see my old projects and think “I did that wrong!” For now, I’m consciously working to shift my attitude to: “that was pretty good, considering my skills at the time,” while acknowledging I’ll (hopefully, someday) think the same of anything I make now.
The saying goes that familiarity breeds contempt. I know for me, When I complete something I hate it it is only with time that my perspective softens until one day I’m walking past that piece that I despised and see something I did particularly well and feel this swell of affection for my work. Do you experience that too? or are you always focused on the flaws?
Learned from a pottery background; taking two weeks to come up with the “perfect bowl” vs taking two weeks to make 100 bowls. The latter always produces the better final product. Now days I turn bowls on a lathe and find the same to be true.
Chair iterations take much longer (weeks as opposed to hours), but I suspect if you’re a half decent craftsman things will work out.
Happy to drive down from Baltimore anytime you need to hide some of your furniture at my house, but you better SIGN it first so I’ll know its yours.
Tom
Yes to everything you’ve said except the part about the chair being crap. It’s not. It’s a damn good chair! Especially if it is still comfortable after sitting in it for 20 minutes. But I suspect you’re saying it’s never up to your standards and that’s probably because you’ll never be satisfied. This is why we learn and grow and strive to improve and also partly why we sweat bullets when we release our creative work out into the wild. I am a woodcarver, and I sometimes use clay to model sculptures – what a game changer for me when I first tried it! I was free to play around – to put clay on, take it off, flatten it all out and start again, etc. You can’t do that when carving wood. It relieved so much of the pressure I felt to get it right the first time.
I’m conditioned to like what I see “all the time”- that chair looks normal vs. that chair is sorta weird. It takes time for the “new” to become normal. When I first saw your Welsh/American stick chair it was like nothing I’d ever seen and I didn’t think it was elegant. (not normal elegant anyway) Then… I built the first one, and a second and a third. Everything about it is normal to me now and elegant and beautiful and above all comfortable. When I show them to family and friends I can see the gears turning in their minds…. Wow! hmmmmm! That’s neeeat? I can excuse them for being confused by a chair they’ve never seen at ANY furniture store ever. I have one in the shop and two in the house. One things for sure now that people are used to it… it’s the very first chair people sit in when they visit. Your new chair is still a little off in my minds eye … but I keep coming back to look at it.
Three different types of “perfection”:
– Aesthetic design including both visual and tactile elements
– Execution of the design
– Utility or how well the object functions (for functional objects, not for art) including durability
The path towards perfection in execution requires practice and paying attention to what works and what doesn’t work. The path towards perfection in utility requires experience and experimentation. The path towards perfection in aesthetics is less clear.
A common mistake is to assume improving execution will improve the aesthetics and utility.
A long time ago, I learned about the Quality Triangle from an engineer. Wiki has a good breakdown. It may be that the answer to your question of quality vs time is hard to solve because it leaves out the third variable. Cost. When you consider how all three interrelate then you can chose which two you can have at the expense of the third. If you want it to be good and quick, then it ain’t gonna be cheap. Good and cheap? Not quick. Or quick and cheap but not good. Of course, “cheap” doesn’t have to refer to actual money. In your case, sounds like peace of mind may be the true cost. Just my two cents (I’ll let you decide which two of the three they are).
“The highest reward for a persons toil, is not what he gets for it but what they become by it.”
John Ruskin
It has become my mantra. Thank you for sharing warts n all.
That post is so spot on. I look back on my own career and as I think on it, you are right. Start with neither speed or perfection and somehow you magically end up with both. Cheers!
Jon
Better than the chair you haven’t made
Chris, just curious, have you ever tried fox-wedging the stakes into the seat? (Why do a through-tenon when you can make it 100% harder?) Or would that make the joint too weak? I’m wondering how the seat would look without the end grain showing.
Thanks,
John