Update: This chair has been claimed.
This chair is the third (and final) in a series of old-school stick chairs built with a batch of local black cherry. This particular example is inspired by one of my favorite 18th-century Welsh stick chairs, which features thin back sticks that splay out to meet a thin comb.
This chair has been set up as an all-purpose chair – dining, keyboarding and relaxing. The back is angled 13.5° off the seat. The seat is pitched back about 1” from front to back. And the seat is 17” off the floor.
Like all my chairs, it is assembled using hide glue, so the joints are reversible should it ever need repairs. And like many early stick chairs, all the components are shaped by hand. The through-tenons on the arms and comb are knifed to shape and are a little proud. All the curves are shaped with spokeshaves, rasps and scrapers. The sticks are faceted by the planes and scrapers that shaped them.
The finish is a traditional organic linseed oil and beeswax finish, which will quickly take on a rich color. It’s important to know that the finish is not very durable, but it is easy to repair. With normal use, this chair will look better with some miles on it.
The chair is $1,400 plus shipping via common carrier (usually $100 to $225, depending on how remote you are). The crate is included in the price. If you live within 100 miles of Cincinnati, I am happy to deliver the chair for free. You also are welcome to pick it up at our storefront in Covington, Kentucky.
If you are interested in the chair, send an email to fitz@lostartpress.com. Ask all the questions you like, but the first one to say “I’ll take it,” gets it.
The next round of chairs will be in oak and have a Middle Earth flavor to them.
— Christopher Schwarz
From the book, which chair most closely ties to the infamous Hobbit Chair? Do you have good all around shots of your Hobbit chair?
None of the chairs are like the Hobbit Chair. It’s an outlier. I don’t have good shots of the ones I’ve built because they are so horrible. That’s why I’m going to fix it.
That was sure some gorgeous cherry, nice work!
How do you put the furriness on the feet?
If you mean everything but the end of the arm with sculpted through tenon in the last pic, search on ” ‘depth of field’ camera”. Basically in a non-automatic camera you can play games with length of exposure and how much of the lens gathers light to adjust how much of the distance around the actual focal distance looks focused. This means you can direct the viewers attention, in this example, to the arm end and tenon and you don’t get generally notice everything else. Chris is really good at it.
One of those things you never notice, but once pointed out you can’t not see, like machine planer marks in “finished” surfaces.
The feet of the chairs have Flexi-felt on them. It is a sticky wool foot that is far superior to the hardware-store felt. I get mine from Lee Valley.
My aged eyes saw “Cherry Bomb Stick Chair”! Until I read it again. Tjme for another sip of beer.