The July floods in Eastern Kentucky that devastated communities also tried to erase part of the area’s history. Audio tapes stored at Appalshop were soaked with floodwaters and later covered with mold.
Appalshop has been salvaging what they can, and have been digitizing some of the gems they have unearthed. This is an expensive process, so donations to Appalshop are always appreciated.
Today Appalshop released the excerpt above that features Chester Cornett being interviewed by Elizabeth Barret. In the interview, Chester gripes about what all furniture makers complain about – how difficult it is to make a living selling handmade furniture. It’s worth your three minutes.
The Whitesburg, Ky., Appalshop building (center) following the late July 2022 floods. Credit: Appalshop staff via Smithsonian Magazine
The early title leader for my upcoming book about Appalachian chairmakers was “Backwoods Chairs,” but I’m now leaning toward “Upwards into the Mountains.” The decision needs to happen soon because my book is nearing the final stages. The search is complete (thank you to those who sent me names and leads after my previous blog posts about the project [post 1, post 2]), the interviews and visits have all happened and the narrative is written. I’m currently editing, adding the photography and working through the chair builds.
As a first-time author I’ve come to recognize two things: 1) I enjoy the process of writing a book and 2) I’m slow at it. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel at this point.
I’m working toward having the manuscript to Lost Art Press this fall.
Late last week I reached out to Eastern Kentucky chairmaker Terry Ratliff (he’s among those featured in the upcoming book) about a teaching opportunity. That was before I was aware of the severe flooding to hit communities in eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia. I followed up with a text to Ratliff to wish him well. He was at a local lutherie shop on the main street in Hindman, Ky., at the time, scraping the thick mud off anything salvageable in the bench room. He relayed the overwhelming mess he saw all around him.
The School of Luthiery in downtown Hindman after the floodwaters receded. Credit: Zoe Oldham
Once the waters receded the full impact and devastation became apparent. The floodwater climbed higher than any time on record in some places. In the charming mountain town of Whitesburg, Ky., near the Virginia border, the North Fork Kentucky River rose more than 20′.
For those unfamiliar with the terrain of eastern Kentucky, there are lower lying, narrow bands of land between the rocky, rugged knobs and mountains. The lower land frequently has a creek or river running through it. Heavy rains funnel into these waterways – this time more than ever before. This was deemed a “once in a millenia” storm: water over rooftops, refrigerators caught up in treetops, homes carried downriver and significant loss of life.
An environmental tragedy immediately became a human tragedy. Entire communities were slammed in the storm. The tight-knit Kentucky towns of Jackson, Neon, Hindman, Whitesburg and Hazard, among more rural other places, were hit hard.
There’s also an impact on the cultural centers within the mountains. The Hindman Settlement School and the Troublesome Creek Stringed Instrument Company are digging out, working to salvage as much as possible. At Appalshop, an Appalachian cultural archive and media center in downtown Whitesburg, a crew works to recover soiled materials before they deteriorate. Those in the community collect what’s floated away.
Clean-up efforts at Appalshop. Credit: Justin Skeens
From an article in Smithsonian Magazine: “‘Some of the film from Appalshop was all through the streets and everything,’ Austin Caudill, a Whitesburg resident, tells the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Billl Estep and Austin Horn. ‘We could lose not just businesses but history.’”
Why mention this here?
Because below I share my travels to Whitesburg in April, 2021, to photograph and study Chester Cornett’s “Appalshop chair.” And because the affected communities are home to a group of eastern Kentucky chairmakers, both past and present. The floods impact Terry Ratliff’s community (while also hitting those of the late Sherman Wooton (Hyden) and Chester Cornett (Perry County). And because within Appalachia, more than any other place I’ve lived or visited, the strands of craft, community, people and place are all tightly woven together.
But most importantly, these communities need immediate resources to aid in stabilization, recovery and rebuilding. There are opportunities to help.
Now to the unicorn that is the “Appalshop Chair,” created by the visionary chairmaker Chester Cornett (visionary: as in some of his chairs came to him in visions and dreams), crafted during the recording of the 1981 Appalshop film “Hand Carved.” Appalshop then purchased the chair. It resides in their archives. I do not know its condition after the flood.
Cornett working on a low bench, in a photo from the Appalshop archives.
It was unusually cold for April, with flurries in the afternoon. No leaves on the trees just yet. The North Fork Kentucky River ran low and quiet beside Appalshop’s building.
I traveled to Whitesburg to visit Cornett’s chair. I’d wanted to see it in person since reading Michael Owen Jones’s book “Craftsman of the Cumberlands.” In it, Jones shares a photograph of the 13-slat double-rocker, making mention that this was the last chair Cornett built, meaning this was the culmination of Cornett’s fabled and prolific chairmaking career, the pinnacle of his skills and final iteration of his making choices. I hoped to study it myself and photograph it for my book.
The Appalshop chair from the back.
The archivist met me at our arranged time. Wearing white gloves, she brought the rocker out of storage. My first impression was how solid and substantial the piece looks in person. Each chair part was shaped with the drawknife before being scraped smooth. Cornett added an extra-special touch to this piece before applying his mystery concoction of finishing oils. He stayed up all night before final filming to add a little “old-timeyness” to the chair by scorching it with a Coleman campfire burner to create a mottled effect. The initial impression by those who witnessed the chair the following day was best described as “aghast.” The scorching has mellowed over time. It’s most noticeable on the back slats.
Filmmakers Herb Smith and Elizabeth Barrett with Cornett’s Appalshop Chair.
I was delighted when Elizabeth Barrett and Herb Smith joined us to talk about their time working with Cornett. They are the filmmakers behind “Hand Carved,” and continue to work with Appalshop 30+ years later. It was their skill and insight that brought about the film. Near the end of the recording process, they realized the chair was something special – something Appalshop should own and preserve. They found the money to make it happen (not the easiest thing to do; creative rural organizations are not known for deep pockets) and it’s lived within Appalshop ever since.
While the chair has always resided with Appalshop, it has not lived a life of ease. Terry Ratliff shared that, years back, he was asked to repair the piece. A summer intern’s dog gnawed on one of the rockers. A rung had worked loose. The chair was a fixture in the staff meetings and was available for everyday rocking. Ratliff, who holds Cornett in high esteem and knows the specialness of the piece, suggested the chair receive a more protected status.
Functionally, the double rocker is not a comfortable chair. The sitter must spread their legs or sit cross-legged to avoid the middle posts. The front rungs rake against the sitter’s calves if they’re not careful.
The underside of the Appalshop Chair.
It was not made for comfort; it was made for attention and to earn a decent price for the labor needed to make it. During my visit, someone at Appalshop shared a memory of Cornett carrying his chairs to Hazard on a Friday, setting up beside a busy road to sell them, and him still being there – with his chairs – into Sunday afternoon. He made beautiful, traditional chairs but there was little local market for them. This pressure pushed him toward new ideas, in hopes of recognition and higher income. If people didn’t want his gorgeous traditional rockers, maybe a double rocker would catch their attention. Though it didn’t work exactly as Cornett intended, he began making more fantastical chairs which garnered him increased recognition (including in Jones’ book), though it did not fully alleviate his financial situation.
Photos from the Appalshop archives of Cornett’s chairs. At center is Cornett working on a double rocker.
A few details: The Appalshop double-rocker is 47″ tall overall, with the seat at 17″ from the floor; it’s 18″ deep overall at the seat (not including the rockers). It’s made of sweet gum, with (likely) hickory rungs and a hickory bark seat. The writing on the slats:
Chester
Hand Carved
For the fiming
The Appleshop
Moviey Caled
Check the Chiremaker
Direxed buy
Heirb Smith
Elizabeth Barret
President Applshop
Pine Mountin Wood
Mad I.N. N. OV. A, DEC 1977
With Our Lords Help
Scholars debate whether Cornett was an artist or a traditional craftsperson. Being the last of his illustrious career, this chair would fall on the “art” side of Cornett’s creative timeline. But that debate doesn’t interest me all that much.
The left arm.
I’m drawn in by the form, the silhouette that appears compact, well-proportioned and balanced when glancing at the rocker from across the room. It’s hefty but not grotesque. Confusing maybe, but I’ve visited the form enough times to enjoy its uniqueness. Move closer to it and the intricate, tightly woven seat becomes apparent, along with scraped surfaces and the octagonal posts and rungs that became a defining characteristic of Cornett’s work. But I’m most drawn to the carved pegs and the drawknife work – details that are only noticeable on close examination, and that elevate the rocker because of the skill and the time involved and the commitment of the maker. These details are noticeably irregular, because Cornett was human and handwork is not perfect.
With Chester’s chairs, there is incredible beauty found in the imperfections.
It’s no secret that Brendan Gaffney and I are obsessed with the life and work of Chester Cornett, a traditional Eastern Kentucky chairmaker who pushed into the world of art with his later chairs he built mostly in Cincinnati.
While Brendan and I have been studying his chairs for some time, we both have developed an odd affection for the hand-painted sign Chester had outside his workshop. The sign is made of bits of thin sheet metal that have been screwed or riveted together. The letters are orange (Brendan found a color photo that has the sign in the background).
If you don’t speak Kentucky, here’s what the sign says:
Handmade Furniture
Maker Of The
Cornett Chairs
We Make Anything
Or It Can’t Be Made
I love the misspellings. “Funiture?” “Chaires?” “Iney Thin?”
Brendan and I have been plotting to make a sign like this for our shop. Today we made a prototype using hardboard, grey primer and orange paint from the home center. After studying photos of the sign, I decided the letters were 5” high and determined the width and height of the sign based on that.
We bought an inexpensive stencil set and stencil brushes from the home center. Then we went to work. The entire project took about an hour.
We’ll hang this sign in storefront’s library. And now I’m going to find some used sheet metal so we can make the real thing. The metal sign will hang in the garden where it will age with the help of the elements.
I’ve seen a blurry photograph of a detail of Chester Cornett’s chairmaking workbench and read Michael Owen Jones’s description of the bench in “The Craftsman of the Cumberlands.” At the time I thought: That sounds like a Roman-style workbench.
And yesterday I found out that I was correct.
Brendan Gaffney and I visited the storeroom of the Mathers Museum of World Culture in Bloomington, Ind., to view artifacts related to Cornett. And we got more than we bargained for. In addition to some of Cornett’s traditional chairs and rockers, the Mathers also had Cornett’s incredible “bookcase rocker” (more on that from Brendan in a future entry), a chair made by Cornett’s grandfather, Cornett’s worn-down Pexto drawknife, his worn-out dumbhead shavehorse and his workbench.
Located on the top rack in the storeroom, the workbench is a segment of a log with four staked legs. The workholding consists of three pegs that Chester could wedge his work between – exactly as described by M. Hulot in his 18th-century book on turning and chairmaking.
I’m pretty sure that Cornett didn’t read Hulot. So it is an amazing thing to see this low Roman-style workbench made by a 20th century woodworker who lived in the wilds of Eastern Kentucky. Did he come up with the idea for the bench himself? Was it something he learned from his family members who also were chairmakers?
The bench is 11” wide at the top and the benchtop is 10” from the ground. The log segment is 4” thick at its thickest point and about 62” long. The four legs are about 1” to 1-1/4” thick and wide x 8” long (minus their tenons).
So this is just another data point showing that low workbenches, as described in “Ingenious Mechanicks,” haven’t disappeared.
Today Brendan Gaffney and I got a rare up-close look at one of Chester Cornett’s rockers during a preview for an antiques auction in Cincinnati.
The walnut rocking chair was one of Cornett’s later pieces. And after a close examination, Brendan and I suspect that the rocker was made during Cornett’s brief embrace of power tools.
The biography of Cornett, “Craftsman of the Cumberlands,” discusses a brief period of Cornett’s career when he purchased a table saw, drill press and router (among other machines) to speed his production of chairs as he became more well known.
It did not go well.
Though Cornett was skilled with hand tools, machines made him nervous, and the book recounts several serious injuries Cornett suffered while using them. The book also documents Cornett attempting to use a router to make the incised lines on the posts and rungs of his rockers.
Brendan and I suspect this rocker exhibits these routed details.
The V-shaped incisions were curved, irregular and even had chatter marks upon close inspection. Some of the incisions looked OK. Others looked like Cornett was having a heck of a time using the router freehand on a narrow octagonal post.
These wandering incisions looked nothing like the crisp incisions on other Cornett chairs we’ve inspected.
Part of me thought: Perhaps this is just one of Cornett’s lesser works. But that ignored all the fantastic handwork on the chair, from the shaped arms to the finials. Ah, the finials.
At the top of the posts are two gorgeous pieces of handwork – tapered and octagonal finials that are just perfect in every way. Crisp, evenly faceted and perfectly symmetrical – something no router would be capable of making. But they are doable with a drawknife.
So the piece, while still extraordinary, made me a little sad. The routed details reflected a man who was clearly uncomfortable with his electric tools, yet struggling mightily to control them. The mistakes didn’t ruin the piece, but they did lessen it.
