Lost Art Press

Yours for the Asking (Plus $1)

Posted on by Lost Art Press

Earlier this week, I put up a chair for sale that I was proud of. Not my thing, pride. But the chair represents a small milestone in my work.

I didn’t expect many people to bid on the green Irish chair I’d built. It’s a painted chair. It’s not a comb-back chair. And it’s painted. But here’s the humiliating thing. No one has bid on it.

So here’s the thing. The rules of the sale are the same. Bid on this chair (or not) by 5 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 21. If the highest bid is $1, I will honor it. Here are the instructions for bidding.

Or maybe I shouldn’t build any more Irish armchairs in the future (no matter how comfortable they are).

— Christopher Schwarz

55 thoughts on “Yours for the Asking (Plus $1)”

  1. Dude that really is a cool and beautiful chair. Can’t believe no one bid on it.

  3. This was definitely a case of “prettiest girl in class not having a date for Friday.” I don’t do the silent auctions here because I assume that the piece will go for WAYYYYY beyond what I can afford.

    4. _exactly.
      Way back, I saw a way back interview with Lauren Bacall.
      Maybe rename it the Lauren chair, and not the painted lady.

    5. Same here I always assume these things are going for 1000 2000 and up?

      I have no idea what the general silent auction winning bids are.

      So I have no idea what to bid.

      It’s a beautiful chair.

  4. I love this chair! I have been getting ready to build an Irish-y chair ever since you started talking about them. Of all of your designs, this is the one that most appeals to me and I saved the image of this chair as soon as you posted it on Instagram. But I want to build one rather than buy one. If I had more money than tools or wood I would have bid on this right away. I’ll end with a quote from a t-shirt I saw in Vermont: “Don’t quit your daydream!”

  5. It’s a beautiful chair in a great color, I’d buy it but my 750 square foot cabin is already overflowing! Keep doing what you’re doing

  6. Hi Chris,

    I love the chair, and would seriously think of bidding on the chair but am in Canada and I know you don’t ship here. If Lee Valley carries them I am in.
    Irish parents so I am biased towards Irish chairs and really need to build one like this. I did a 3 legged back stool based on ADB like I had seen in Ireland, and have a Gibson build planned. Good luck and I hope you get a good price.

  7. LAP, I do not like bidding. Now this is just me, when I buy from a platform say say ebay I try to look for one that there is no bidding. I think the Irish Chair is great, panted or not.
    Ralph McCoy

  9. Up in Canada so I’ve not got a horse in this race, but have you checked that there’s nothing wrong with the email address (during this auction in particular that is)? Getting NO bids really strikes me as ‘something has gone wrong’ not ‘no one is interested’.

  14. I would love to own one of your chairs, and this one is a beaut, but right now bidding what it’s worth and shipping (or time off for the road trip to get it) is out of reach for me. Please keep making such awesome chairs. I’m hopeful I’ll soon have time to start chasing you down that path.

  16. I think it’s actually a compliment, Chris. I didn’t bid because I automatically assumed it would go to someone for $5,000.

  17. I’m with most other folks here – I assumed people would bid far more than I can afford to spend at the moment on it. But I’ve gone ahead and put one in. It’s not nearly enough for what it’s worth, but what I can part with right now.

  18. I WISH I could buy one (or five) of your beautiful chairs. They’re works of art, and I love seeing photos of them. Unfortunately, I’m really (really, really) poor, though I’ve got my snotty nose pressed against the shop window, to be sure. I have your Stick Chair Book, too, in my “porn collection” of LAP books, and I dream of building one—when I can afford the wood.
    Your chairs are very special, and I can’t believe someone who can hasn’t bought this one yet. Please keep building. And writing.

  19. My bid is in. My wife and I were talking just this morning about how beautiful the paint is.

  20. Like others here, it has never crossed my mind to bid on a chair. I figured that’s for rich people. There are going to be tons of bids now. I hope some of them are for more than $1.

  21. I’m truly surprised by this. This chair is amazing, I didn’t bid because what I believe the chair to be worth is a price I can’t afford to pay today. I didn’t want to insult your stellar work with a low bid.

  23. No offence, it’s a nice looking chair, but all my chairs are padded. Even my shop stool. (Toilet doesn’t count, that’s a seat, not a chair.) I will not be bidding.

  24. That’s just nuts! I’ve built two of these lovely chairs thanks to your instruction. They are by far my favorite design. I’ll definitely bid on it.!

  25. I’d gladly pay for construction details.
    It wouldn’t have to include as much detail as your recent videos.
    Assume the audience for this are people that have already built some of the other stick chairs.

    Maybe just a cut list, sight lines, resultant angles, and either an arm template or a description of the geometry to draw one.

      1. The chair is the Curved Back Armchair from “The Stick Chair Book” with slight modifications.

        1. The legs begin a 1-5/8″ octagons instead of 1-3/4″.
        2. The back sticks are 2″ longer than shown in the book.
        3. The backrest has a different shape on its ends. The shape is a 3″ r. arc. It begins 1-5/8″ form the outside stick.

        All the other changes are subtle. There’s a 1/4″ x 1/4″ chamfer on the underside of the seat. The arms are shaped more – more rounding, basically. The sticks are left as double-tapered octagons and are not shaved to tapered cylinders. The backrest gets a lot more shaping at the edges.

        If that sounds like a lot, it’s not. Hope this helps.

  26. Most of your chairs sell for way more than I can justify spending on a chair, so to avoid seeming insulting I don’t bid. I sent a bid this time based on my ability to pay for a chair rather than the actual value of the chair, so please consider it a gesture in support of your work.

  27. I bid on the Irish chair.
    Bought the Stick Chair Book last year and have been gathering wood for the projects. I was also amazed no one bid on it, for the same reason most of the other folks said, it’d go in no time to someone with more money than me…
    And cleaning my shop today I came across the full size patterns that came with the book, first one up? The Irish chair!

  29. It’s a beautiful chair Chris. I would have loved to bid except I’m saving for some tools including a Lucian Avery inshave.

  30. When I read your post and how pleased you are with this chair, I thought you should keep it in your family. I realize you can’t keep everything, and keeping doesn’t pay the bills. Like others, I have wanted to bid on chairs, but at this point I’m spending my money on classes. I really hope to take a chair class from you someday and build a chair to fit my size and shape.

    1. Pride may not be your thing, and I appreciate that, but that post was delightful. The energy and excitement were palpable. I kept thinking about it hours later while walking the dog. And yeah, it’s also a really nice chair.

  31. This chair is one of my favourites. Unfortunately I’m very much international and my budget is also $1 rather than a fair amount for your work.

    1. I am in the exact same boat as you. Love the chair. Live in Mexico. And I cannot afford to pay it’s worth.

  32. Saw the chair and loved it. Couldn’t afford its worth. Probably spent half an hour ogling it. Guess we all got stuck living in boxes we made up.

  33. That’s my favourite chair you’ve shown us. I think it’s perfect☺️ But I also live in Canada.

  34. Just another Canadian saying that the chair is gorgeous. If I was anywhere near close enough to pick that chair up I’d bid on it, even though I’m really excited to try making the Gibson and don’t have space for two chairs 😉

  35. If shipping to Romania would have been possible I would try to get this chair without blinking.

  36. There is nothing wrong with your chair! I’m amazed that no one bid on it.
    I would never pay so little for someone else’s hard work, it wouldn’t be right.
    I think it’s more about how people are feeling about our world right now, there is a lot of uncertainty. Art is the first thing to suffer when people don’t feel secure about the future.
    Don’t feel bad, the government just lost an 85 million dollar plane that decided it didn’t want to work anymore and went on strike. Just imagine the work that went into that thing!
    Just try again, someone will wake up and buy it.

  37. Its a very nice chair but I think you might be bumping up against a couple if things. The first being people not having as much expendable money in their budgets due to higher energy costs and cost of living increases.

    The second being when you put one of your chairs up for silent auction as opposed to a set price, most of us assume its going to end up much higher than a set price and out of our reach so we figure “why bother?”

    I think a combination of those is what’s going on with zero bids.

  38. What we have here is a classic case of “enSITification.” EnSITification is where a creator produces an object of such unparalleled quality that retailers and customers believe the object could never have a price high enough to reflect its value and inevitable demand. Hence all parties opt instead to sit in their favorite chair and drink a beer.

  39. There is no way that no one bid on this chair. Didn’t someone post in the comments above that he did bid on it? A more likely explanation is that there was a system error where the bids were not recorded/saved. Occam’s razor suggests checking there first.

    Cliff Polubinsky

Comments are closed.