Editor’s note: We hired local historian Heather Churchman of Covington Uncovered to research the Anthe family, whose company, Anthe Machine Works, occupied 407 Madison Ave. for decades. You can read more about the history of the building here. And if you would like to help fund the Anthe Building restoration project, there are more details here.
The Anthe family created a legacy in Covington that lasted from 1897, when Frank D. Anthe founded Anthe Machine Works, until 2019, when Frank’s great-grandchildren closed the company. Anthe was Covington’s second-oldest business when it closed.
Kentucky Post, August 29, 1905
Frank Anthe built the Anthe headquarters at 407 Madison Ave.— the building just acquired by Lost Art Press, which plans to establish its own multi-generational legacy there.
Frank was born in 1868. His parents, Joseph Anthe (1826-1890) and Maria Susanna Brandner Anthe (1826-1899), were born in Hallenberg, in the Hochsauerland district, in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Joseph’s occupation in 1870 was listed in the Covington City Directory as stove molder; in 1880, it was grocer.
Two years after Frank established his company, on Sept. 14, 1898, he married Clara Cecilia Greifenkamp (born in 1874). Flora was their first child, born in 1899, and Frank Joseph Anthe, the oldest son, was born in 1901. Frank and Clara’s three other boys—Elmer, Ralph and Arnold—died as young children.
Frank D. was one of the founders of the White Villa Church and Country Club in Northern Kentucky, about 18 miles south of Cincinnati. Along with his community-oriented lifestyle, Frank instilled a great work ethic and sense of entrepreneurship into his oldest son.
Frank died in 1919, leaving his oldest son to take over Anthe Machine Works at 15 years old. Clara had died in 1914. In some ways, the two elder Franks managed the easier days of the business.
Frank J. Anthe Sr., Kentucky Post, November 20, 1952. This photo was also used in an article that was published in 1933.
Frank Joseph would go on to marry Grace Hale. They had two sons, Frank Joseph, Jr. and Donald, and a daughter, Kathleen.
Frank Anthe Sr.’s Tudor-style home in Fort Mitchell, as it looks today. Photo by Heather Churchman.
Like his father before him, Frank Sr. was well known in the community: he was a founding member of Crestview Hills, Ky., and the city’s first mayor. The family lived in Fort Mitchell, in a Tudor-style home that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
After Frank Sr. died in 1963, Donald (Don) was the next Anthe in line to take over the business. He was 34 when he took over.
Don was used to going to the Anthe shop when he was a teenager, as he told The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1983: “It was a real treat…I think [dad took us there] to get us out of my mother’s hair… but my father made us come down here every Saturday. He would take us out for lunch. We got to go to a pool hall for a sandwich and a Coke.”
Everyone called Don “The Captain.” His brother Frank Jr. was known as “Sonny.”
Frank “Sonny” graduated from Beechwood High School and he was a member of the school’s first football team in 1945. He attended Villa Madonna College.
Don also graduated from Beechwood High School in 1948. He served in the U.S. Marine Corp during the Korean War from 1949-1953. Before his father died, Don was working as a traveling salesman for Bauer and Black, an elastic supports company.
After he became President of Anthe Machine Works in 1964, Don designed the company’s woodcutting tools by hand. The tools were sold all over the world. Times were really, really good, until, as that 1983 interview mentions, recession hit.
Don said, “[In the early ’80s, when the home building industry suffered], the furniture business just plain stopped.”
Manufacturers stopped buying Anthe’s tools.
“I can tell you right now our business is off by 75 percent from what it was before the recession,” Don said in the interview.
At the time, they had a staff of five, down from 10, including Don’s brother Frank.
The Anthe building is second from the end, behind the “pad” sign. Photo by Walter E. Langsam, December 1982. National Register of Historic Places.
Owning the building their grandfather had built provided the brothers with peace of mind: “[The company has managed to avoid losses], but that’s because we own the building. When I don’t feel like paying myself rent—when there’s no way I can afford it—I don’t. If we had a big loan to make payments on, we’d have been out of business a long time ago.”
The Cincinnati Enquirer, May 15, 1983. Photo by Gerry Wolter.
At the time of the 1983 interview, the Anthe Building still had a stairway covered in turquoise paint that Don and Frank had “slapped around as children.” There was even a partially full bottle of whiskey that their father Frank Joseph Sr. had left in a drawer.
After Don and Frank retired, Don’s sons Mark and Doug took over the business for its last years.
Frank Jr., aka Sonny, died in 2013. Don, the Captain, was with us until November 4, 2020. Don’s obituary said that, “when [Don] was at home he enjoyed working in his yard and then taking naps with his beloved dog Willie.”
Their legacy will and still lives on.
—Heather Churchman
Heather Churchman is a communications manager by day and an architecture-obsessed local historian by night. A passionate and curious spirit, she can often be found whispering sweet nothings to the buildings of Covington, Kentucky. Born in Oxford, Ohio, educated at Ohio University, and now a proud resident of #LoveTheCov, Heather is living proof that you can take the girl out of Ohio, but you can’t take Ohio out of the girl. Follow Heather’s explorations of local history and all the weird and wonderful things she uncovers along the way at Covington Uncovered on Instagram.
A few weeks ago, Chris asked me to research The Anthe Building. To help, he put me in contact with Heather Churchman, who runs one of our favorite Instagram accounts, Covington Uncovered. Heather was instrumental in the development of this piece for her research, knowledge of Covington history and where to find necessary information. In this post and a couple more to come, Heather and I will share information with you about the Anthe building, company and family, and why the history of this building is so fitting for the future of Lost Art Press. We also met with Jason French, curator at Behringer-Crawford Museum, who shared with us some historical items from Anthe Machine Works (check out his Curator’s Chat video on Anthe Machine Works here) and is helping to coordinate an interview and oral history project with members of the Anthe family soon.
p.s. If you would like to help fund the Anthe Building restoration project, we are selling some limited-edition items here.
In 1890, 1895 and 1897, Frank D. Anthe is listed in the Williams & Co. city directories as “Anthe Frank, mach. H. 648 Philadelphia.” This indicates his occupation was machinist and the address, we presume, was his home address. Anthe Machine Works has long advertised that it was established in 1897, and this change is noted, in part, in the 1898-1899 city directory, with two addresses and the structure of his name: “Anthe Frank D. machinery, n.e.c. Stewart and Russell Av. H. 648 Philadelphia.”
(1886) Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Covington, Kenton County, Kentucky. Sanborn Map Company. [Map] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sanborn03152_001/.
Looking at historical Sanborn maps, Heather noted that in 1886, the area around 407 Madison had dwellings that were near a huge industrial block with Fred J. Meyers Architectural Iron Works occupying most of the space.
I want to pull you aside for a moment, with an excerpt from the book “They Built a City: 150 Years of Industrial Cincinnati,” published by The Cincinnati Post in 1938, to illustrate the prominence of the machine tool industry during this time:
“Probably the first Cincinnatian to invest mind, brawn, and money in the business of manufacturing machine tools was John Steptoe, a foundry man who hustled about his shop on Clay Street. About 1850 Steptoe fashioned a wood planer, a machine used extensively in local woodworking plants. Marketing his product proved so profitable that Steptoe in 1855 took in as a partner Thomas McFarlan, carpenter, who not only believed that woodworkers needed machines to increase production, but also that he could give them exactly what they wished. The firm of Steptoe & McFarlan was therefore soon putting out mortising and ennoning [stet] machines which were revolutionary in trade practices.”
John Boh notes in the July 2006 Bulletin of the Kenton County Historical Society that Cincinnati and Covington began to see more and more machine tool manufacturers around this time, in part, thanks to the introduction of the steam engine.
Continuing in “They Built a City,” pages are spent on the history of the machine tool industry along with dozens of listings of large machine tools producers during this time, noting that a number of companies rebuilt and repaired machine tools for resale.
“…Because a great many improved, as well as newly designed machines are being made here, some companies specialize in this type of research and engineering: Anthe Machine Works, 407 Madison Avenue, Covington. …These plants have made Cincinnati the recognized world center for machine tool production. More than 35 of the 150 plants in America are situated here. They build practically every tool used in industry….”
Back to the Sanborn maps. By 1894, the entire space around 407 Madison was barren after a fire destroyed Fred Meyers, which Heather says, explains why the buildings at both 407 and 409 Madison are considered “newer” for the neighborhood.
In 1902, Anthe must have been renting space at Phoenix Manufacturing Company due to this article in the May 12, 1902 edition of The Cincinnati Enquirer: “Not since the fire at the F. J. Meyer Wire Works, on March 4, 1892, the day of the inauguration of President Grover Cleveland, have the firemen been compelled to cope with such a large fire as that of Saturday night, which at one time threatened the entire neighborhood at Third and Russell Streets.”
The fire gutted Phoenix, a four-story building. Anthe is mentioned near the end of the article: “The loss to the Anthe Machine Works east of the scroll works was about $10,000 and is not fully insured. Several of the firemen were injured by falling glass and cut and bruised about the hands and face.”
The listing in the 1904-1905 city directory: “Machine Works, Frank D Anthe propr. n.e.c. Stewart and Russell Av.”
On August 29, 1905, a building permit was issued by Auditor Gould to F. D. Anthe. The permit was for a “three-story brick factory building to cost $3000.”
Building 407 Madison Ave.
We get some details on the 1897 construction of the Anthe building from an application written in 1983 for the Covington Downtown Commercial Historic District to be named to the National Register of Historic Places. It states:
“The Anthe Machine Works, a similar business, however, has been located in a factory and offices with a fine Neo-Classical front at 407-409 Madison built (or rebuilt) for the same family firm at the turn of the century. This is the kind of small shop of highly-skilled workers (many of them probably of German background), making very specialized products, that characterized the Covington economy, and to some extent, the downtown area, throughout the later 19th and early 20th century, although sometimes on a large scale, like the Stewart Iron Works that have remained at Madison and 17th Street for almost a century.”
and
“Schofield, of Schofield & Walker, used a similar manner in orange brick for the Anthe Buildings, constructed or refaced shortly afterward nearby at 407 and 409 Madison (Photo 5, distance).”
and
“The Weber Brothers, Schofield, Walker, and William Rabe who worked first for [Daniel] Seger and then with Schofield from 1898 and 1904, may also have designed the many similar buildings throughout Covington.”
When walking through the Anthe Building you get the sense that things have stayed beautifully stagnate, at least structurally and architecturally, over time. This sense also rings true in an article written by Mike Pulfer, who featured the Anthe company in The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1983. He interviewed Don Anthe, who took over the company after their father died (Frank J. Anthe) in 1963. (An interesting aside: According to the article, Frank J. Anthe took over the company from his father, Frank D. Anthe, when he was only 15 years old.)
In the article, Don remembers spending Saturdays cleaning up the basement, whitewashing the walls and running errands for his father. At the time this article was written, because of the recession, business was down 75 percent. Where Anthe used to employ 10 employees, they were down to five. Part of their saving grace, Don states, is that the family owned 407 Madison.
“The structure, a row building put together in 1897 as the Anthe Building, is the epitome of low overhead,” Pulfer writes. “It looks much the same as it [stet] in its infancy, with its original wainscotting and wood floors. The stairway that leads to the third and uppermost level remains decorated in the same turquoise paint Don and Frank Anthe had slapped around as children.
The turquoise paint remains to this day.
“Steel powder and shavings litter the floors on the first and second levels, where more than a dozen machines are scattered. The third floor is used for storage and utilities.
“The office, with a display window fronting Madison Avenue, is basic and functional. The antique photographs of the business and the partially consumed bottle of whiskey Frank Joseph Anthe left behind remain tucked away in the bottom of a desk drawer.
“‘We’re largely known in the woodworking industry as custom tool builders,’ Anthe said. ‘If somebody wants a special router bit, we’ll agree to make him one or two, or a half dozen or a dozen.
‘The larger manufacturers won’t handle anything less than 100.’
“…A couple of decades back, ‘People were telling us plastics were coming in and they were going to take over the furniture industry,’ Anthe said. ‘They said we’re going to be out of business …Well, plastics came in, and plastics went out. People like wood.’”
Fast-forward to an article written in October 16, 2003 in The Cincinnati Enquirer that states that the building was designed with reinforced beams to support the Anthe machines’ weights. And in the 1970s, many of the firm’s belt-driven machines had to be replaced with electric ones to meet new workplace regulations.
By January 30, 1906, there were two ads in The Kentucky Post:
“MACHINIST—Good man with general experience in toolroom. F.D. Anthe. 407 Madison Ave. Covington.”
“CABINET MAKERS—Two, good at once. 407 Madison Ave.”
The 1908-1909 city directory listing: “Frank D prop Anthe Machine Works 407 Madison Ave h 646 Philadelphia.” And looking at a 1909 Sanborn map, 407 Madison is identified as “Machine Shop, Woodworking.” 409 Madison Ave. does not yet exist.
Other Businesses at 407 Madison Ave.
Anthe posted ads for factory space for rent in local newspapers as space became available.
1924: “FACTORY SPACE for rent: 3rd floor; plenty of light; reasonable rent; elevator furnished.”
The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 2, 1924
One of the first businesses to rent space in the newly built Anthe building was Kelley-Koett X-Ray Manufacturing Company (which employed Herman Anthe, Frank J. Anthe’s brother), in 1905. They rented the second floor, per an article written by John Boh in the January/February 2020 issues of the Bulletin of the Kenton County Historical Society.
We can tell the types of other businesses that rented space, in part thanks to newspaper job ads.
1914: INNER SOLE CUTTER—On block. No. 407 Madison av. Covington, Ky.
1917: GIRLS—Exper. On power sewing machines to make skirts, middles and dresses; good pay; steady work. 407 Madison, Cov.”
1919: JOB-PRINTING pressfeeder: experienced. PICTORIAL SOAP CO. 407 Madison av. Covington, Ky.
1921: WE REGRIND CYLINDERS: Drop in and see the only cylinder grinder in Northern Kentucky. General Machine Work a Specialty. Dixie Regrinding Co. 407 Madison Ave.”
1926: Solicitors Wanted: Crew managers and helpers, men and women, to sell our new kitchen utensil, “EJECTOR FORK.” Write or call at office. THE CHRISMAN MFG. CO., 407 Madison Av.”
1926: Unusual Values: in Lamp Shades, Bases and Uncovered Wire Frames: The Chrisman Mfg. Co. 407 Madison Ave., Second Floor.”
Anthe posted job openings from time to time as well.
1942: LATHE HAND: Experienced Men Only: If engaged in war work do not apply. ANTHE MACHINE WORKS. 407 Madison Ave.”
1946: “MACHINISTS—For lathe or milling machine, only experience men need apply, 407 Madison Ave., Covington, Ky.”
The Cincinnati Enquirer, February 10, 1946
1951: “SUBCONTRACTS WANTED: Machine Shop equipped with 6 engine lathes, 4 milling machines, cutter, grinder and heat-treating equipment is looking for work.”
Historical newspapers are a treasure trove of personal information. In them we learned that Frank Anthe defeated Rev. James H. Lions, pastor of the Shinkle M. E. Church, in a 1928 handball tournament involving 20 businessmen at the local YMCA. Frank Anthe’s $50 overcoat was stolen from his office in 1932. And in 1921, yeggs went to the trouble of breaking into his safe, only to walk away with $50 in war savings bonds.
The Kentucky Post, November 25, 1921
A Building that Was Meant to be
One of the reasons Chris fell in love with the Anthe building is because of its tie to local woodworking history. Then, we made another discovery:
A printing company (!) occupied the entire second floor from 1931 to 1976.
“Gottleib Frederick Adolf (“Fred”) Schramm fled from the German Kaiser from Tubingen, Germany, passed through Port Huron, Mich., and eventually settled in Florence, Boone County, Kentucky about 1896,” writes John Boh in an article in the January 1991 Kenton County Historical Society Review.
Schram dropped the second “m” in his name, began printing for Hopeful Lutheran Church and did other contract printing for a decade before establishing a print shop with a partner on Pike Street in Covington. Their first big contract was to print stationery and whisky labels for Crigler and Crigler distillery. Schram bought his partner out and in 1931 moved to the second floor of the Anthe building. The business, which eventually was passed to Schram’s son, John, remained in operation until John’s retirement in 1976.
The Cincinnati Post, December 24, 1933
You can see the printing presses and letter trays that were used on the second floor of the Anthe building at the Schram Print Shop at Heritage Village Museum in Sharonville, Ohio. Schram Printing Company donated these items in 2004, and Heritage Village built a structure, Schram Print Shop, in their living history museum, to house them.
The press, paper cutter and cases of type all existed in the original Schram Print Shop at 407 Madison Ave. Today you can see them at Schram Print Shop, Heritage Village Museum. Photo by Ethan Powles.
The Anthe Building is impressive when you walk through it. But what I kept seeing were the people. Present in the lone wooden hanger.
The broom.
Buzz, Al, Terry and Lonnie.
And while reading the obituary I found for Victor J. Schraivogel, who died at age 69, a retired machinist who worked at Anthe Machine Works for 44 years.
In 2003, Jenny Callison interviewed Doug and Mark Anthe for an article titled “Long-standing businesses survive on service” in The Cincinnati Enquirer.
“Doug and Mark Anthe operate the cutting tool plant started by their great-grandfather in 1897,” Callison writes. “There are other elements of continuity; Anthe Machine Works occupies the same structure where it began more than a century ago. It continues to make cutting tools for the furniture industry.
“‘We stick to the plan for the people before us,’ Doug Anthe said. ‘We produce a good product and back it up. But we have the ability to shift.’”
One of Hemmo Honkonen’s Audible Cabinets, from his website that features videos of the cabinets.
Core77 recently featured furniture designer’s Hemmo Honkonen’s series of audible cabinets. Honkonen writes on his website, “The cabinets are a study in mechanically produced sound, movement and interaction. Each cabinet has its own sound that is triggered by opening and closing the doors.”
You can see photos, watch – and listen – to the doors being opened, here. Sounds include a triad, bass triad, cymbal (which is actually fantastic if you want to shock unsuspecting snoopers) and scale. (Oh, and there are audible chairs, too!)
A fun party trick when people visit perhaps, but while reading (and listening) to all of this I was reminded of something my grandma once said. For years she would grow weary of the sound of her screen door being slammed, open and shut, all day long, especially with six kids during the summer months. And then? Once all the kids had moved out, she missed that wooden racket.
There’s an antique dresser in my childhood bedroom, now a guest bedroom. A couple years ago my mom asked me to get something out of it and as soon as I pulled the drawer out, and heard that familiar swish, and felt that familiar hitch in that one spot that requires you to lift up just a bit, I felt like a teen again, looking for one of my T-shirts.
Steve Shanesy turned a large maple bowl for my husband and me as a wedding gift and anytime anyone in our family hears the familiar thump it makes when it hits our dining room table they know we’re having a salad, one of the hundreds that bowl has held (if not more).
Every dog and child knows the sound of a front door opening when a parent is returning home and most kids know someone is hiding under the cellar door when they hear that particular bang during hide-and-seek.
I know the sound that the fallboard makes when someone is about to play the piano, and when it’s late at night and I hear that familiar kitchen floorboard creak, I know that someone is hungry (or sneaking a treat). I know someone is cold and looking for the wool blanket when I hear a struggle with the latches on our antique bedroom trunk, and I know someone needs a pen or a pencil when I hear the lid on the old wooden pencil box slam shut. I know someone is dragging our stool instead of lifting it when I hear a particular rasp across our pine floor and I know someone is starting up the mantle clock again when I hear the delicate open and close of that small, sweet wooden door.
My stick chair, patiently waiting in the shadows for its next victim.
When I came to “A Vampire Chair,” while copy editing Issue No. 1 of The Stick Chair Journal, I side-eyed my own stick chair in my house. Without even reading the first sentence, I thought, There’s more than one?
Turns out the story in The Stick Chair Journal is about a fabled chair in Tennessee that was broken apart to murder its owner and, once repaired, begins acting odd. Although my chair was never broken apart to murder anyone, my entire family insists it’s hell-bent on trying. And I’m to blame.
In late 2004, I was an editor at Popular Woodworking Magazine, and in between copy editing, they’d throw me into woodworking classes. Given that this was almost 20 years ago, the details are a bit fuzzy, but I do remember I got married in October 2004, and soon after I returned from my honeymoon I was building a Welsh stick chair with Don Weber and several other editors at the magazine in a week-long class. I remember Chris being particularly excited about this opportunity, and I knew it was a big deal.
So I tried to soak in everything Don said. And not just about building chairs. I was going to start doing yoga every morning on a beautiful rug in a stream of sunlight! I was going to start making my own lemon curd! I even considered wearing vests.
I was also a nervous wreck. I was 25 years old, had majored in magazine journalism, and was finally getting used to rabbets being spelled with an “e.” But everyone was more than kind; I had a lot of help, and I built a stick chair.
I’m pretty sure I was behind everyone else in the class because I think Chris was done and helping me finish my chair when he told me I might want to break my edges a bit.
“No,” I said.
Why? I don’t know. I was a stupid stubborn 25-year-old. Or maybe it was because he had presented it as a choice instead of an order. Still, Chris was my boss, and to break up the awkwardness, I think I said something along the lines of, “I want it to look crisp,” as if I knew what that even meant/how Welsh stick chair edges were supposed to look/what I was even talking about.
Chris just let me be, which he always graciously does.
So I brought the chair home, which, looking at, y’all will probably criticize, but I was (quietly) proud of this chair. Crafting letters into sentences came naturally to me. Crafting wood into something sturdy and useful did not. And as young, broke newlyweds, this chair was, by far, one of the nicest, and most useful, pieces of furniture we owned. Even if it looked a little wonky.
My husband, Andy, and I painted the chair. (If you ever want to test a marriage early on, take two very different personality types, add a can of milk paint and paint a stick chair together. We are still married. I’ll leave it at that.)
Beforepainting, Andy asked if I wanted to break the edges a bit.
“Why does everyone keep asking me that?” I asked/yelled. “They look so good sharp! I want them crisp!”
I’m pretty sure I let out an exasperated sigh, as one does in your mid-20s, thinking no one understood me or my good taste.
My chair listened to my mulishness and responded in kind. It had no mercy.
It cut everyone it encountered.
Friends would come over and, looking at it, a bit perplexed, Andy would say, “Kara made that!” which was very kind and loving. And I swear the chair, in response, would magically beckon them over because the next thing I know, they would be touching it/sitting in it and then there would be blood and then I would be apologizing and getting them a Band-Aid.
But I was stubborn.
“You could still break the edges,” Andy said.
“Everyone is just sitting in it wrong,” I said.
Then we had kids.
First Sophie. Then two years later, twins, James and Owen. Once they were old enough to walk and talk, they didn’t call it The Vampire Chair. They called it The Evil Chair. Anytime they bumped into (or, as they claimed, the chair reached out and bit them), they carried on about how this chair was trying to kill them.
“It’s behind me, isn’t it.” – James
My kids, pointing out the scars my Vampire Chair has given them.
For a while, the Vampire/Evil Chair lived in our attic.
There are benefits to accidentally building a Vampire Chair:
1) If you ever find yourself parenting a 4-year-old and two 2-year-olds in a small home, and you are tired, and they are (always) not tired, you will eventually learn the only way you can keep them from (literally) swinging from the dining room chandelier is to put all the dining room chairs up on the dining room table when not in use. We did this for over a year. Because our kids refused to engage with my Vampire Chair, if all our dining room chairs had been Vampire Chairs, we wouldn’t have had to go to this trouble.
I wasn’t lying.
2) We like to have people over and especially when you’re young and broke, seating is limited. We’d bring out everything we had – the random rusty folding chair in the garage, plastic outdoor chairs, pillows on the floor for cushions. Sometimes my Vampire Chair, which had gotten a bad rap, would sit empty. This would annoy me to no end and I’d usually sit in it to gently prove a point. (No garlic, I simply had a whole move down I made so I could sit without drawing any blood.) But every once in a while a friend or family member would visit and despite a still very-present scar on their skin they would, unafraid, make way for the Vampire Chair and settle in. Respect.
3) If no one is sitting in a Vampire Chair, you always have a place to put things – your coat, your bag, the mail etc.
If I’ve learned anything since accidentally building a Vampire Chair 20-plus years ago it’s that if something you love keeps biting, it’s easy to place blame. “The edges are fine – everyone just needs to be more careful. What were you thinking, wearing shorts?” But love doesn’t have to (nor should it mean) perfection. You can love something you created and admit you made (sometimes many) mistakes.
Also, does this mean I think you should always listen to what others tell you should do?
Nah.
But I do believe we’re all stupid stubborn 20-somethings and stupid stubborn 70-somethings. Real growth happens when we learn when to ignore advice and when to listen. Now in my 40s, I think that’s a lifelong thing.
(For what it’s worth, our Vampire Chair is no longer in the attic and it has stopped biting! Or, the edges have been broken finally. On flesh.)
John with his first stick chair, elm and yew, 1987, and a child’s highchair, also elm and yew, 1988.
Early on John Porritt (author of “The Belligerent Finisher“) enjoyed playing around with bits of wood in his spare time. In the early 1970s, he carved a face into a piece of hazel and strung it onto leather as a necklace. He used a heated rod to create and carve a pipe. During a difficult period in his life, he made a carving out of soft maple based on Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
In 1979, John attended Shrewsbury Technical College (now Shrewsbury College) for one year. At first, they refused him a grant, but John appealed and won, “which was marvelous,” he says. He studied fine furniture making with John Price who trained with Edward Barnsley in the Arts & Crafts tradition.
“I remember the first week I virtually shook with nerves about being in the college and being back in school because I didn’t have great experiences in school and it felt odd being there,” he says. “John Price came by, and he looked at my work and laughed. And I said, ‘Don’t laugh; show me what I’m doing wrong. Show me – go on. After that, we started to get on, and it was grand.”
John loved his time at Shrewsbury College. He remembers playing football at lunchtime (and a woman from Liverpool, nicknamed Carol Keegan, who was studying ceramics, beating them all every time) and an exhibition they had at Shrewsbury Castle. John showed a cabinet based on Chinese forms.
A cabinet John built while attending Shrewsbury. Walnut, ash, ebony and silver. 1980.
“At Shrewsbury, the finish we used (this was between 1979 and 1980) was polyurethane thinned 50/50, and put on really thin with a clean, well-washed rag,” he says. After several coats we gently cut back with flour paper, then applied a couple more thin coats, burnishing with a taut cloth pad as we went. This gave a great finish. I remember saying to the design lecturer, after using it on a cabinet, What a fine finish! He said, There is no such thing as a fine finish. There is only a finish appropriate for the job. This shut me up. He was a serious, definite man given to pronouncements; however, over the years this thought does come back to me – that’s just another can of worms. But I suppose we all decide what is appropriate – it is fluid after all.”
John says he loved his time at Shrewsbury. After Shrewsbury, John worked briefly as a carpenter then, in 1980, he went off on his own, working out of his parents’ single-car garage, trying to get commissions.
“And that was very hard,” he says. “I was very naïve about it, really. It was hand-to-mouth as I recall.”
Zippo the Clown and his assistant Tommy. A prop John made in collaboration with Alfie Van Derplank in 1981 as a prop for a theater show for kids about energy.
In 1982, he got a commission from Winchester Cathedral, “which was quite something,” he says.
The piece was to be used as a stand for The Book of Remembrance in the Epiphany Chapel in the cathedral. John designed the piece within about three minutes of the meeting. The cathedral, he says, which was built from 1079 to 1532, is a mishmash of styles.
“I tried for a few days to find other designs, but the first one was the best. The cathedral has a stunning roof, and it’s got superb columns and mouldings. And I designed this piece as three columns, two in the front and one in the back, as a symbol of Calvary.”
The Book of Remembrance Stand, designed by John, 1982 to 1983. The silver gilt lettering was designed and made by P.C. (Phil) Craze.
The columns, made out of brown oak, are held together with laminated curves of soft maple designed to echo the ribs in the roof. John used Indian ink to gradate the stain of the rails from blue to purple and back again, carrying the colors of the chapel’s stained glass windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones with William Morris & Co.
John hoped more work would come from this commission than did. People did, however, start to ask him about restorations.
“And I really didn’t want to do restoration work,” he says. “I hadn’t trained for it, I didn’t know a lot about it. But I did it. And as time went on, I got somewhat better at it. And I had help from two great guys, my friends Spike Knight and Johnny Gould. I started to understand color and texture, and surface. And that was a wonderful thing and that’s added to what I do. And that has come back again, to my interpretations of the Welsh chairs.”
In 1981, John had met Keith Rand, who trained as a cartographer, went on to art school then studied sculpture in Scotland. Keith made fine sculptures and occasionally chairs for a living, as well as teaching. Keith and John ended up becoming good friends and shared a workshop for a while; he was John’s best man at his wedding. John taught Keith about tools – how to sharpen them, how to work them – and Keith taught John how to better understand and explore form.
“For a while, we were embryonic chairmakers,” John says. “He worked from leaning seats onto chairs inspired by agricultural forms using tines. Then years later onto beautifully realized Windsors with very few components. They really worked so well. Mine were firmly in the country furniture mould, inspired by the yew-wood Windsors that I was often restoring. Keith was a great man to know and share with.”
In the early ’80s, John became interested in paint, particularly industrial paint. A friend, Phil Craze, an artist and inspiration, showed him the joy of coral and turquoise together. He partnered pigments and created stunning effects. He put the colors onto plywood and made simple, geometric objects. Phil had designed and made the silver gilt lettering for the Book of Remembrance stand John made for Winchester Cathedral.
Paint samples, Hammerite and cellulose, 1982-1983.
“One thing that did come from this commission was that Phil and I were invited to an aluminum anodizing plant to experiment with different effects using color and shape on the raw aluminum,” John says. “This was actually a lot of fun. We kept some of the work, and they kept some for their gallery.”
John tried to do craft fairs, selling things like mirrors made out of thin plywood, but he had trouble selling fine furniture or colorful things. He did, however, successfully sell a cricket table at a fair in the Guildhall Winchester. However, he made it as a joke.
“I made a small top and then I had three legs coming out of it at odd angles and then an even smaller base so it was actually quite unstable,” he says. “I did the top blue like a sky and I did the legs white in ash and the base green. I got a turned piece of wood and I colored this up red so my cricket table was like the three stumps and a ball in a game of cricket. I made a couple of bales on the base that were knocked off so the guy was out. And it got me on the front page of the local paper. The headline was ‘John Bowls the Maiden Over.’ It was a play on words which in Britain people do a lot and I’ve always enjoyed. A ‘maiden over’ is six bowled balls with no runs made from any of them.”
Mirror frame photographed with the sky, soft maple, green copperas with Indian ink and enamel paint. John says Dexion industrial shelving served as inspiration. 1983.
In 1983, John’s father died, “which was as huge blow for me,” he says. “It was huge.” In his grief he carved a massive head, shaped liked a world, and painted it blue, with rockets going off all over it.
“My mum said, ‘What are you doing that for?’ And I remember saying, ‘I have just got to do this,’” John says.
Falling in Love in Paris, Making a Life in England, Moving to the States
In 1984, John went to France. Sue, an American who was in Paris studying art, was standing outside of a hotel on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. They talked. They fell in love. Eventually, John had to get back to England to make some more money. They planned to meet next outside the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy. The meeting spot was a lot bigger than they each realized, and they spent a lot of time walking around, looking for each other.
“When we finally bumped into each other I had my one small bag filled with clothes and she had massive amounts of luggage,” John says. “We traveled over northern Italy together, discarding bits of her luggage along the way.”
A simple table inspired by the massive oil platforms on the North Sea, 1985.
A flat-top table base John made during his first trip to the U.S. in 1985. Everything was purchased at a local hardwood store: plywood, yellow pine and maple dowels. The top looked like it wasn’t flat, but it was. John says he was inspired by military aircraft, “the wonder and the horror.”
John and Sue got married in 1987 and moved to Shrewsbury, England, where they lived for 20 years and had a daughter who is now 18.
“I never thought I’d have a child,” John says. “It’s like having a room opened, another room in your life, full of stuff you never realized. It’s an astonishing thing. It’s not really explainable.”
Davenport desk, early Regency design, 1988, commissioned.
A chair based on West Country forms, ash, colored with caustic soda (lye), 1988.
John built three of these chairs. This is the second one and he still owns the first. Yew with burr elm seat, 1988.
Welsh-inspired cricket table, burr elm and ash, 1989.
Windsor chair based on Michael Dunbar’s C-arm design, 1989.
Around this time John got into spoon carving. He liked the idea of creating things with small tools and bits of wood that he could carry around, a traveling workshop of a chisel, small axe and a couple of knives. He liked the simplicity.
A spoon that John made in the Catskills. Hard maple, 2009.
“I think spoon carving is a fantastic thing for people to do and gain a better understanding of line and form,” he says. “I look at the spoons that people make today and some of the work is just lovely. Wonderful, wonderful things.”
John’s mother died in 2006.
“It was almost inconceivable that my mum died,” he says. “We were very close. She was always very encouraging about whatever I was doing. And she’d always like coming out to places with me and meeting different people. That was good.”
Welsh-inspired 10-stick chair, oak and ash, 2004. “I enjoy this one a lot,” John says.
Gothic-attempt chair, soft maple and yew from the owner’s estate. The chair is situated in Pontesford House, a regency mansion in Shropshire, England. The home’s arch gothic window inspired the back of the chair. “I’m glad I made it,” John says. “It is almost successful, like a lot of things in life.”
John and Sue decided to be nearer to her family so they moved to the U.S. in 2008. They lived in the Catskills for a year and then bought an 18th-century house with a red barn situated next to a picturesque stream in Spencertown, New York, near the Shaker Museum in Chatham. Sue loves to help John with advice on color.
“There are a lot of great people here,” John says. “I’ve got a couple friends here who I wouldn’t agree with on very many things other than our friendship and our woodwork. They have completely different views from me but they’re great people. It’s an interesting thing to think of the different ways people see things. Celebrate the similarities and enjoy the differences, where possible.”
Photographs Spilling Out of a Book: How ‘The Belligerent Finisher’ Came to Be
John has done a lot of restoration over the years for well-known English and Welsh antique collectors and dealers, including Tim Bowen and Richard Bebb. Tim suggested John send pictures of his chairs to “a lad down here who likes stick chairs.” So, John did.
Nicholson plough plane, restored 2012. This restoration project launched John’s career as a tool restorer in the U.S.
“Many, many years later, I got a phone call completely out of the blue,” John says. “And it was Chris Williams. And he said, ‘Why all those years ago did you send me those pictures?’ And I said, ‘Because Tim Bowen told me you were interested in chairs and I just wanted to share them with you, reach out, for the camaraderie.’ And he stuck them in a book and completely forgot about them. And then many years later, Chris Schwarz came to see him. He was looking at a book and these pictures fell out. And they had a look at them. And that’s how Chris Schwarz heard about me, I think.”
Around the same time, Chris Williams heard about John again through Tim. Tim and Richard had separately been talking about restoration projects John had done and they couldn’t work out how John had done them.
And then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“I thought to myself, My god, this could be it,” John says. “We could die from this. I didn’t know what to expect or think. So I decided I’m going to go out and do stuff I really want to do that I put off that I couldn’t afford to do or that I didn’t think people wanted. So I made the chairs that are featured in the book. Starting with the black North Walian four stick chair, and I’m really glad I did that. It’s hard to make speculative stuff and run a business as well.”
John sent pictures of these chairs to Chris Williams who then sent them on to Christopher Schwarz. And that’s how “The Belligerent Finisher” was born.
“Some of them are good I think,” John says, when talking about his chairs. “I’m not vain but I know some of them are good. Because I’ve looked at a lot of stuff I’ve made that isn’t good. I’ve always felt that the only person I’m in competition with is me. I’m inspired by other people and occasionally disappointed by them. But I’m not in competition with them. To create, a person’s got to be honest with themselves, look at something they’ve done, assess it, praise it, destroy it even (this decision is often better slept on), whatever, but really be honest about it and walk away and move on and think about the next thing. You learn from what’s happened.”
Talking about the chairs he’s making now, John says: “They almost frighten me because they’re quite hard to do, to get the proportions together. They have to look right and be comfortable. You know, I think I’ve made two or three really comfortable chairs, ones that you want to sit in and just not move from and a lot that are OK and some that aren’t that good. I have to make all my chairs, regardless of what they look like, comfortable. And that’s not always an easy thing to do.”
John currently has chairs on order. He’s also working on restoring Cesar Chelor planes for a collector and, for another collector, he’s restoring a 1696 handsaw with the help of his friend Tom Curran. Also there’s a rare, small, Holtzapffel miter plane that needs attention. But what he most wants to do is build – and finish – chairs. John recalls one comment he saw in response to his book, from a professional finisher, who said, “When I saw this, I was initially appalled.”
John says, “I love that phrase. He was ‘initially appalled.’ The fact that I made someone initially appalled, I like! But I would also agree with him. He went on to say that now that he’s looked at the book, there are things he wants to try.”
While in the states during Covid, John thought a lot about the places he has loved throughout his life. In his head he’d re-walk the hills and lanes in Shropshire and mid-Wales, and spend imaginary time in the meadows around Winchester.
“I would think about some of the things I have come across, seen and enjoyed,” he says. “I wanted to get that feeling, that flavor. I wanted to touch that. That’s really why I make those chairs.”
John says the finishing techniques he used on his chairs in the book and today are not an attempt to create fakes.
“They’re not even copies of antiques,” he says. “They’re interpretations of ideas, ideas of how a chair and finish could be. And some of them are successful and some of them aren’t quite successful. I think the black one, the first one I did that seemed to flow through me, is very, very successful. I loved that. And the green one, the big green one. And there’s a red one on the next page that’s very good. And there are some good effects on the others. I try to get an effect like grading color, like when you see a sky in the evening and it’s changing. That is in my mind, as well as the look of worn furniture surfaces. You see that a lot in England during October and November. The light and the color and the amount of water in the atmosphere. The color and the sharpness— but also the mystery. I’m trying to get that. I’m trying to get a good depth of color. I’m trying to get texture, with the wood having refraction and depth.
“I just wanted to find something to do,” he says. “That was really important to me. I wanted to find something that had value. And I think I found it. I don’t think I’ve always worked on it. I think I spent a lot of time paying bills. But now I want to pay bills with these chairs.
“Enthusiasm and encouragement. The following was said to me by a woman at a show in Upstate New York, and it still makes me smile and laugh. She sat in the North Walian four stick chair with a worn finish, looked up and said: Harmony for my cheeks. I said, That’s it.”
