Screen capture of Dallas Bump (right) with his nephew, Leon Sutton, and a “Bump Rocker.”
Dallas Bump (1918-2016) of Bear, Arkansas, was a fourth-generation chairmaker who learned the trade at a young age from his father, Fred Bump, son of Philander Bump. Philander Bump emigrated from France and opened the Bear Chair Shop shop in 1870 – the same shop out of which Bump worked more than a century later, using many of the tools and patterns that his father and grandfather had used.
Bump passed on the family tradition to his nephew, Leon Sutton, who worked with him to harvest and dry local hardwoods (mostly red and white oak) that became the hand-made chairs – constructed with no glue, nails, pegs or other fasteners – for which the family was known. From what I can tell, just about everyone in the family was involved at one time or another; the men made the structure, and the women wove the seats and backs from white oak.
Bump’s work was featured by the Smithsonian in several “folk life” exhibits, Southern Living magazine and many television programs, and one of his rocking chairs was in the White House during the Clinton administration.
Unfortunately, the Bear Chair Shop appears to now be closed. Nonetheless, the 2014 video below is a fascinating glimpse of Bump, his shop and the family chairmaking affair.
— Fitz
p.s. I’m am stealing Bump’s ingenious post-marking process for my staircase spindles. I’m sure others have used a similar approach, but as a non-turner, it’s the first time I’ve seen that.
Thanks to an arrangement among the groups that run Frank Lloyd Wright’s public houses, virtual tours of the architect’s buildings are streaming on partner sites every Thursday at 1 p.m. EDT, according to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.
It is, however, a bit confusing to figure out what is going on where. Your best bet is to visit the Conservancy site for links to participants, or to search #WrightVirtualVisits.
Comfort, v. 1. To strengthen; to encourage; to support; to invigorate.
— The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles
Had it not been for COVID-19, many of us would have been in southwestern Massachusetts this weekend for Fine Woodworking Live. Even as a hard-core loner I had a blast there last year, and while the news that this year’s event had been cancelled did not surprise me, I’m really missing the opportunity to reconnect with some people I met there. Among them is furniture maker Aspen Golann, whom I profile here as part of my “Comforting Soups” series* of interviews with woodworkers I find inspiring, especially in this current moment.
Aspen at North Bennet Street School
On April 6th Aspen Golann published a video on Instagram titled “One way to make a brush.” Knowing Aspen as I do (which is to say, not well — we’ve met just twice, but every contact I have with her is a riotous explosion of ideas and laughter and empathy), I anticipated a piece of work that would be thoughtful, as well as beautifully put together. But it was so much more: a detailed instructional video that takes viewers through every step of the process, from design to finishing, with hand-lettered instructions written in real time – and humor! – all sent out to the universe at no charge. Even better, Aspen includes instructions for improvising with tools and materials that most of us are likely to have on hand, knowing that we’re staying home in response to the current pandemic (and many folks have seen their income reduced, if not slashed to nothing). Even though I’m probably not going to make a brush, I’ve watched the video multiple times for fun, because (let’s be honest) even the loners among us are feeling isolated and could do with a bit of cheer.
Drafting brushes with integral erasers
Aspen, 33, is the Wood Studio Coordinator at Penland School of Craft near Asheville, North Carolina, where she has worked since May 2019. As with other schools and colleges across the country, the campus is currently shut down. So Aspen made the video in her garage, using an old desk reinforced with 2x4s, to which she bolted a vise.
“Hangon a sec,” I hear you thinking. “Collaborated with Peter Galbert?How did she make that happen?”
They met when she was a student in the two-year furniture program at North Bennet Street School in Boston, where Peter is a guest lecturer and instructor. “Pete’s an artsy nerd, and I think he saw some of that in me,” Aspen says with characteristic modesty. “He’s always excited to meet maker-weirdos even if they’re students – and I was so jazzed to connect with someone excited about styles outside of iconic period furniture. Pretty soon we were just regular friends.”
At Peter Galbert’s shop
After graduating from NBSS she received a commission she considered out of her league: to make a Windsor settee. Not just any Windsor settee, this one “needed to perfectly kiss the wall of the clients’ spiral staircase.” The designer Beata Heuman chose her to build it because she had made a table for her the year before. She pitched the collaboration to Peter: “We split the dough and make the chair.” He agreed. “In some ways, making that chair felt like a master class,” she says. “I got to ask every question and see him work through every problem and work through them with him and alone. It was really cool.”
For a creative fix while she was a student in the program at North Bennet Street, which is renowned for its focus on high traditional East Coast furniture techniques and forms, Aspen took classes in glass enameling and lost wax casting at Penland. She also co-taught a sculptural spoon carving class with Julian Watts during a residency at Anderson Ranch. “We were scheduled to teach an experimental carving course with him at Penland this summer,” she says, disappointed.
A few of Aspen’s spoons
Having seen a number of Aspen’s spoons online, I’ve been struck by their fine lines, so different from those of greenwood spoons. I wondered whether she makes them from kiln-dried wood. Yes, she answers, adding that some of the bowls are so thin “you can read the newspaper through them. The handles are three pieces of veneer thick; because they’re sandwiching a piece of shop-sawn ebonized maple veneer, they’re super strong.” To glue the material together she uses Titebond III.
Before her studies at North Bennet Street, Aspen spent six years teaching art and Russian literature at a couple of private high schools, The Cate School in Santa Barbara (“It wasn’t a great fit for me culturally – no jeans, no first names, water polo – but I loved my students; I still text with them”) and The Putney School in Vermont, which was more progressive; it had a full farm and strong focus on art and student independence. But this is Aspen Golann we’re talking about, so you won’t be surprised to hear there was more – in this case, a class called “From Sheep to Shawl,” in which students learned to shear a sheep, spin the wool and weave it into a shawl. And because color is important, there was also a dye garden, where they grew plants such as marigold and indigo to color the wool.
Aspen with her sheep
“I loved teaching,” Aspen says. “It wasn’t a ‘safety plan’; it was my whole plan, a big-kid job. I did it long enough that I could do it, leave it, go back to it. But [at 28 I realized] there was [still] time to do something really dumb” – here she’s indulging in her trademark self-deprecation – “and that was going to furniture school.”
“School is a place where people don’t mind if you’re terrible at things.” She had taken an ‘art with a function’ class as a student at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. “I had always loved art, but it wasn’t as fulfilling as it needed to be for me to pursue it as a full-time job. Somehow, when you add functionality, it was like this now matters. It’s a sculpture you can read by. It’s a sculpture you can sit on, and even better, it’s comfortable.”
First chair
Now, at 28, she wanted to explore furniture. “I’ve taught myself to do a lot of things, but furniture…I couldn’t even imagine how I’d approach it. Furniture felt like the most inaccessible art form, both culturally and technically, for a young woman interested in art. I felt I had to go to school for those things. I knew that my gender meant that if I was going to make it, I needed the pedigree.”
While visiting her parents in Boston in 2016 she visited North Bennet Street School, and “it was like, everything they were teaching seemed completely and impossibly out of my league. This is what I should spend money on: the thing that I can’t teach myself. I consistently invest in things that play to my weaknesses. I like doing things that are too hard for me.”
As a student at NBSS Aspen adapted historic forms to a feminist perspective. As she puts it, “I was one of the only women in a shop with male furniture makers, learning from other male furniture makers. When I feel isolated, I look for ways to express myself. At NBSS I was surrounded by masters of period furniture forms, so I committed to learning as much as I could from them – while simultaneously looking for ways to incorporate my artistic background and to talk about my experience as a woman.” In Aspen’s rendering, an Eli Terry shelf clock that would historically have had a farm scene reverse-painted on the glass panel now had the lower half of a woman’s body. “I like to blur the line between furniture and figure sculpture. I literally inserted myself in my pieces.
“I really worked with my instructors,” she emphasizes, as someone who in no way takes the work of dedicated teachers for granted. “I respected them and committed myself 100 percent to their expertise and put my own interests on the back burner. Being creative with the furniture allowed me to strike a balance – between traditional and contemporary styles, and between the roles of student and designer.”
She follows this earnest testimonial with a flourish of self-deprecation. “I had prior training in fine art, and at that point I just wanted an old master to criticize my dovetails for two years – I definitely got that, and a lot more.”
“Window seat” (2017)
But before that…
Between college and teaching Aspen worked as a pig, turkey and apple farmer at a farm outside Austin, Texas. The property was run by a couple who needed help because the husband, a deep-water pipe layer, was gone for six weeks at a time. “And when he comes home, he’s a cross-dresser named Viviana La Tarte!” she exclaims. “The first time I saw him working, he had this really long red hair and looked about 6-1/2’ tall, with his hair blowing in the wind, and he was wearing a little secretarial outfit with a pencil skirt while chain-sawing posts for a pig fence to the same height. I woke up and came out of my cabin and thought ‘What is that beautiful being on the horizon in that beautiful outfit with that hair?’”
Not that her first sight of Viviana was any more unusual than her initial encounter upon arriving at the farm. She pulled up just as Viviana’s partner was attending to a pig in labor. Part of the pig’s uterus was stuck, and no sooner had Aspen emerged from her car than the partner shouted, “GO GET ME THE LUBE!”
“Where is it?” asked Aspen, a complete stranger to the place.
“IN THE BEDROOM, BY THE BED!”
“I ran into the house and retrieved an enormous pump bottle of personal lubricant. After I coated her entire arm in KY Jelly, she was able to get all of the piglets out safely.”
While living in the Austin area, Aspen also worked for the Haas Brothers. “They weren’t as well-known at that point,” she notes. “Their dad was looking for someone to work on a mosaic in glass, for minimum wage, for a client of his.” She worked on the project and they became friends, she and “this incredibly pleasant Austrian man who seems to appreciate my skills, affect and oddity.” He ended up commissioning her to make a painting for Leonardo DiCaprio, a friend of the Haas family.
Farm near Austin
Exploring yet another layer of Aspen’s history, we find her living on a sailboat in the Caribbean during a gap year between high school and college, where she earned her professional coastal navigation and sailing licenses through the American Sailing Association. “I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As long as I have food and meaningful work to do, I can pursue whatever other opportunities I want.
“I was the only crew member small enough to be lowered into the bilge for cleaning, so I think it’s fair to say I earned my keep. I worked so I got fed and did correspondence classes in coastal navigation and marine biology, out of pure curiosity. Meanwhile, we sailed from tiny island to tiny island…delivering half-food and medical supplies, and half b.s. t-shirts and [other] American stuff.”
Family background
What accounts for Aspen’s relentless drive to challenge herself, to subject what is so often the self-indulgence of art to the discipline of function, to cement her ceaseless learning with so many types of accreditation? “On one level,” she answers, “I come from a long line of inventors. Things should work. On another level, some people’s creativity is sparked by having complete freedom, but most people’s is sparked by being asked to play within boundaries. When my sculptures became usable, I finally cared and saw a place for myself in the creative field.
“I’ve been trying to figure out where my set of interests came from. I don’t know anything about the women [in my family’s history], because that’s the way it goes. My mom’s parents were dairy farmers.” But her favorite possessions growing up were the small-scale pieces of furniture that her mother’s father, whom she regrets she never got to meet, had carved out of firewood. “If you’re a person who carves 15-drawer chests out of firewood, you’re a tender person, at least.
“I remember growing up in my paternal grandfather, Herbert Goldberg’s, shop. He was an inventor in a time before it was easy to commission custom hardware, plastic and glass so he knew how to make everything himself. I remember my grandmother got really mad because my brother and he snuck into the house to slump glass in the oven.” Herbert invented the refractometer and updated the pacemaker to make it more functional. Making functional things runs in the family, so Aspen says “credit where credit is due.”
Credit is also due to her paternal great-grandfather, Emanual Goldberg (1881-1970), whose inventions include microfilm and the first video camera. The first Jew to be kidnapped by the Nazi Party, he was held hostage until he handed over the rights to his inventions. He escaped to Israel; later her grandfather Herbert changed the family name to Golann, after the Golan Heights.
At her maternal grandparents’ dairy farm. Left to right: One very patient cow, Charles Hopkins, Jr. (Aspen’s maternal grandfather), Helaine S. Golann (Aspen’s mother), Charles “Butch” Hopkins (maternal uncle) and neighbor (name unknown).Emanuel Goldberg, Aspen’s paternal great-grandfather
Her father, Dwight Golann, spent his career in law. After practicing as a litigator for many years he turned to mediation, which he taught at Harvard. Her mother, Helaine, is a retired psychologist and currently teaches yoga; she has worked with people living with post-traumatic stress and Parkinson’s disease. Her older brother, David, designs and teaches maker-space classes for a STEAM program in New York City that offers art classes to schools that wouldn’t otherwise be able to offer art at all.
Aspen with her brother and parents, 1990
Back to today
The Penland campus is shut down through the summer of 2020. Although Aspen can’t get into her shop, she’s making pieces at home, some of which she sells through the Penland Gallery’s online store. She’s also doing some things she previously considered out of her league, such as electrical work and repairing small motors. In the past year she learned how to tune up all the machines in the shop. YouTube is invaluable, she says. “I’ve been watching kids’ videos about how small motors work and how electricity works, then working my way up.” I also highly recommend the book The Way Things Work!”
Addressing the strangeness of the current moment, she says: “It’s a good time to be patient with yourself, because you have time. The last time I remember having this kind of free time is when I was a kid on summer break. For the first time in my adult life, I have more time than anything else. I tell myself, ‘You have different resources, so you’ve got to do different things. The reason you’re feeling lost in all the time is…because normally time is our most limited resource. And now things are flipped. You don’t have money, but you do have time. So that’s why I made that video. Because I know people need support and distraction, and all it cost me was time.
Working in her studio at Penland (Photo: Chad Weeden)
“I’m making peace with what I have at hand. This hearkens back – some people are inspired by limitations and boundaries. What can I do when I only have these things? I’m using it as an opportunity to apply the skills I have to a completely different kind of work. If you’re a furniture maker you’re already excited by rules and boundaries. This is just an opportunity to dig deeper into that perspective on making.”
The book Emanuel Goldberg and His Knowledge Machine (2006; Libraries Unlimited) tells the story of Aspen’s paternal great-grandfather.
*This series is my version of all those recipes for comforting soups that have proliferated across the web in response to enforced isolation and anxiety.
She is offering limited editions of the 12 prints featured in the book. Customers in the U.K. and Europe can order the prints from her website; Lost Art Press is offering these prints to the U.S. market. The deadline to order is May 15.
We asked Molly to share her process; you can read about it below.
Introduction It was an honor and a challenge to be asked to make some prints for “Good Work: The Chairmaking Life of John Brown” – the subject is personal and the specs a little unusual, and maybe more technical than I’m used to. The chairs and tools have turned out to be wonderful subjects for study, and with help from the two Chrises (Schwarz, Williams), I’m really proud of my small part in the book.
Basic details Original linocuts carved, inked and printed by hand using an Albion press. Editions are limited to 75 or 50, printed on Japon Simili paper using oil-based relief printing inks.
Chris Williams’ chair. The angles of these lovely objects are hard to capture, and as I worked mainly from old photographs of John’s chairs there was an added 2D layer to contend with. Each image had several versions until I was happy with the final result.
Relief printing The majority of my prints are made using relief printing, in this case linocut. Relief printmaking is the process of taking a surface and altering the height to leave relief areas that take up ink from a roller. Paper is placed on top and pressure applied to transfer the image. Anything carved or cut away will print white. Working in reverse and positive/negative is something to get your head around at first, but I hope it will keep Alzheimer’s at bay in the long run.
All the prints for “Good Work” went through a process of looking and drawing, transferring the sketch to a lino block in reverse using tracing paper, carving away the white areas and leaving a relief image ready to take the ink.
I also dabble with intaglio processes (etching), and planographic printing (stone lithography) but find I return again and again to linocut and woodcut because I love the carving process. The original drawing is often very minimal when transferred to the block and I “draw” the rest with my set of gouges. The best way I can describe it is that there is a resistance to the gouge that is just enough to accommodate the intention of the line you wish to create. Think too much about it or let your mind wander and you will lose it. It is a wonderful test of focus as falling out in your mind often means a mistake that has you starting the whole plate a second time.
Sketchbook pages.
Plates The plates used for “Good Work” are a mixture of grey hessian-backed lino (sometimes called battleship lino), and Japanese Vinyl, a two-sided synthetic rubber plate with a very smooth surface. Lino is made from pressed linseed set on a hessian backing to hold it together; it carves beautifully and can also be etched with a mixture of caustic soda (several of the images have this effect – it allows tone to be built up in addition to carved marks). I much prefer the grey lino but ended up using the vinyl for the larger chairs mainly because of the ease of cleaning and durability. However well you clean a lino block (I use plain vegetable oil which also helps condition the surface), the vinyl will stand up better to repeat printings and larger editions.
Versions of the spokeshave and adze before inking.
Cardigan chair on vinyl.
Some early chair experiments on lino block.
Tools I use gouges made by a Swiss company, Pfeil, and 90 percent of my carving is done with the finest No. 12 V-gouge. These little wooden-handled tools fit comfortably in the palm of your hand and are incredibly good.
Printing I help run a small printmaking organisation in the seaside town of Aberystwyth. Despite it’s small stature, Aberystwyth boast a university, the National Library of Wales and a strong group of printmakers. The workshop is member run and open to all styles and levels of printmaker. We run classes and exhibit regularly as a group, and talk a lot about process and equipment in the same way I suspect woodworkers do.
We’re lucky enough to have a cast iron Albion press dating from the 1850s, and the majority of the book plates were printed using this wonderful machine. Albions were used for commercial book printing until the middle of the 19th century, and afterward by private presses and artists.
The inked plate is placed face up on the press bed, paper is carefully placed over it and the toggle mechanism draws the flat metal platen down in one steady press to transfer the image.
Circa-1850 cast iron Albion press.
Paper The paper I used for this set of prints is the machine-made Japon Simili (made in Holland, not Japan). It has a warm tone and its fine, smooth surface makes it ideal for relief printing as it reproduces fine detail beautifully. For relief printing I also use Somerset rag papers and the occasional piece of fancy Japanese paper (mantra whilst printing: don’t f*ck it up!).
The three chairs drying in the workshop.
Inks These prints are printed using oil-based printmaking ink from Intaglio Printmakers, London. I have tried many inks and find these are the best for my work in terms of texture and coverage: less flat than the water-based equivalents and more durable. The only disadvantage is drying time; this mid-Wales coastal area is extremely humid (we even have Welsh “rainforest”) and drying times can be a week or even more, depending on the season.
Editor’s note: The chair chat you are about to read this time features a backstool wearing leg warmers. If you already feel hot, please don’t read on.
We don’t authenticate chairs – we just talk about what we like and don’t like.
We don’t know much about this chair. Its age, where it’s from, who saddled the seat… it’s all unknown. All we have is the pictures you see here and this short description from the seller: “Height 29”, Width 24”, Primitive ash back stool with chunky seat, good colour, strong and sturdy, English or Welsh, early 19th century, Paul Dunn antiques, West Sussex.”