Lost Art Press

Author: Lost Art Press

Publisher of woodworking books and videos specializing in hand tool techniques.

The American Welsh Stick Chair

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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I try not to call my chairs “Welsh stick chairs” for several reasons. I don’t live in Wales. I don’t have access to the craggy timbers used for the seats. And I don’t have hedgerows where I can harvest sticks, armbows and crest rails.

You might also be thinking: “Yeah, and you’re not Welsh – Herr Schwarz.”

My opinion: I don’t consider blood to be the sole requirement to become a member of a community. People can be accepted into – or rejected from – a community despite their DNA. I’ve got a fair amount of English, Welsh and Irish blood (47 percent), but that gives me no claim to the Welsh stick chair – or any other.

I’m an American. I’ve lived here my entire life. And my design aesthetic, wood choices, tool selection and goals are typically American (for better or worse).

And so I’ve decided to describe my chairs as “American Welsh Stick Chairs.” To my mind, this fits in with the long American tradition of taking furniture forms from the U.K., Europe and elsewhere and adapting them to our tastes and our timbers.

We took U.K. styles such as Jacobean (1603–1625), William and Mary (1690–1730), Queen Anne (1702–1760), Georgian (1714–1830) and Neo-Classical (1750–1830) and taught them an American accent. This continued into the later 19th century with both the English Victorian and Arts & Crafts styles.

When all those styles landed here, we altered them to suit us. (Note: This is not a uniquely American practice. Locals have always played with imported styles.) In many cases (but not all) Americans tended to simplify the styles. We removed ornamentation. We used local woods (or exotics).

In my heart, I think that’s what I’ve done with my beloved antique Welsh stick chairs. I use New World woods, because this is what is available. Getting timbers with swirled grain for the seat is a struggle for me (so far), and so I use what I have – street trees, mostly. But they don’t compare visually to the Welsh ones.

Because I have access to dang-straight wood, I make my sticks, legs and stretchers so they follow the straight grain. A old Welsh chairmaker might have used a branch for strength in these cases, and the branch might have had some wiggle to it.

I’ve also tried to lighten the older forms, which I consider both an American trait (historically) and a modern one (in general).

And so for me, the term “American Welsh Stick Chair” fits. “American” because it was made in the Americas. “Welsh” because that’s the tradition it was derived from. “Stick” because sticks. And “Chair” because I don’t make love spoons.

— Christopher Schwarz

A Visit with John Porritt, Chairmaker

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Welsh stick chairs turn up in some of the strangest places, including the Hudson Valley of New York.

Today on my drive home from Fine Woodworking LIVE (the event was wonderful), I was invited to stop by the shop of John Porritt, a woodworker who trained in the U.K., has made many traditional chairs and now lives and works in a small town in Upstate New York.

While a lot of Porritt’s work is in the restoration of old chairs and tools, he also builds new English and Welsh chairs using traditional methods. In fact, John Brown praised one of Porritt’s Welsh chairs in one of his Good Woodworking columns in 1995 (which is about as good as it gets for chair praise).

Porritt’s shop is scenically located behind his 1700s-era house and tucked next to a swift-running stream. It’s an old barn with a big front door, one window and plenty of space for Porritt’s band saw, workbench and all the old wood he brought over from the U.K. when he and his American wife moved to New York in 2008.

In addition to being stocked with impressive stacks of old wood (some of it 300 years old), Porritt’s shop is full of chairs he has built and collected over the years. I could write a blog entry about each of these chairs – Porritt has fantastic taste in vernacular chairs – but I didn’t have time to take notes as he described each one.

So you’ll have to settle for some shallow descriptions that I hope are accurate.

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One of the first chairs he showed me was this vernacular American Windsor. We see few to none of these sorts of chairs in the Midwest, so it was a delight to look it over. The wide sweep of the chair’s crest made it quite comfortable. The saddling of the seat was unusual. It’s wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was nothing my buttocks had felt before – the seat’s pommel was longer than is typical.

Also fascinating is this chair. It is remarkably similar to some of the earliest known English Windsors that were advertised for sale in 1725. The seat and the way it is saddled is astonishing. It has been heavily sculpted above and below to create a seat that looks like it is thin and has been bent like a modern Eames chair. But it’s a solid piece of fairly thick wood.

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Inside Porritt’s house is his favorite chair, a Welsh stick chair that presses all of my buttons. The legs are slightly curved outward. The armbow is made from a branch that was resawn and then scarfed together with a long diagonal joint. The seat reflects the shape of the armbow. And the undercarriage is similar to some chairs I’ve seen at St Fagans.

But it’s the overall effect of the chair that is what’s lovely. Porritt says it’s the last thing he sees every night before he goes to bed and it makes him happy.

Back in the workshop, this little Welsh chair is also a looker. The rake of the spindles, the shape of the arm and the details of the crest are some of the highlights of the chair. (You’re going hear a lot more about this chair in the future as I purchased it from Porritt.)

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Here you can see two of Porritt’s chairs on either side of his wood-burning stove in his shop. His chairs sit very well and harness a lot of the details of Welsh chairs that I love. His chairs reminded me a lot of Gareth Irwin’s chair that I saw in my visit to Wales last year.

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Here’s another Welsh chair that is on the small side. I immediately assumed the chair had once been a comb-back and had suffered a comb-ectomy. Porritt said he was 90 percent certain that was not the case. He’d found bits of the original red paint lodged in the top of the chair’s sticks. The patination on this chair was quite lovely.

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Finally, this Windsor chair that Porritt thinks was made by someone who also made ladderbacks. Porritt says many of the chair’s details, including the shaved components and the way the spindles were made, suggested a ladderback chairmaker had produced this chair.

I took a lot more photos, but I need to get to sleep. I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot more about Porritt in the coming months – he gives talks to organizations and schools on his craft – and we might even be able to lure him to Covington to teach a class next year.

— Christopher Schwarz

Origin Stories

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LAP_logo_stickerThis weekend I’m at Fine Woodworking LIVE and, to be honest, it’s a tad weird. After being in the other camp for 22 years, it’s disconcerting. I feel like I’m crashing their party.

It’s all in my head. Everyone here is as sweet as milk, and I’m sure it will go fine. (Unless the FWW staff tells me I was brought on to be Christian Becksvoort’s manicurist and astrologer during the event.)

The drive today through Upstate New York was stunning – I got to see Spring occur in reverse. And it reminded me of a fateful drive I took on the same highway 13 years ago when John and I were starting this yet-to-be-named publishing company.

We were racking our brains for a good name for the company. I’m averse to naming things after me. I don’t have a big enough ego to shoulder that load. So “Hoffman & Schwarz Ltd.” was right out. Plus, it sounded like a German audio equipment company.

One of the other contenders was “Tried & True Press” (this was before Tried & True finishing products – I hope). It’s a good name, but I was taught to avoid clichés like the plague.

Another: “Said & Done Publications.” I like this one, but it didn’t have any connection to woodworking. If you’d like to have it, it’s yours.

“Straightedge Publishing.” The problem with this name was it could also be the parent company of a skateboarding magazine. Or a publisher of books for people who don’t consume alcohol or drugs.

And then there was “Sawset Redemption LLC.” (OK, I’m lying and I’ve had two beers.)

In any case, 13 years ago I remember muttering to myself during that long drive when “Lost Art Press” just popped out of my mouth. Nervous that I would forget it, I grabbed a pen and a business card and wrote the name down while using my steering wheel as a desk. This is illegal to do in 36 states, FYI.

So. Good day.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you are at Fine Woodworking LIVE, please do stop by and say hello. I’ll be the guy in the Prism Conference Room scraping Steve Latta’s corns.

That Rumor is Something I Can’t Do

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I get a lot of odd email through my personal website, and most isn’t worth mentioning. But there’s one email I get every week that I want to put to bed. It goes like this:

Someone told me you host classes where people build a roubo bench for a week with you and take it home is that true

Sorry, no. It’s not true. We hold some classes at our storefront (complete list here), but I don’t teach much these days. And we don’t have the facilities to teach a workbench class.

I still love to build workbenches and research their history. But there’s no way I could manage a class like that in our little storefront. So if you see this rumor repeated out on the internet, would you mind stabbing it in the eyeball for me? I feel bad for the people who keep asking me with high hopes.

There are lots of people who teach workbench classes. You might ping Mark Hicks at Plate 11, who teaches some classes in his shop along those lines.

I’m flattered to be asked. But like I said, it ain’t me.

— Christopher Schwarz

This Cat Would Like to Sell You Some Soft Wax

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Katherine has just completed another batch of soft wax, which is available in for sale in her etsy store. Soft wax is great for the interiors of your projects. We use it on our lump hammers. And one customer really likes it on his shoes as a polish.

However you use it, don’t put it on your beard. It contains turpentine, which is an irritant.

Katherine cooks up the wax in our basement using a waterless process and puts it in heavy glass jars with metal lids. The interior of the lids are coated with a plastic to prevent any rust from forming.

And then Bean the three-legged cat swoops in to steal all the attention.

— Christopher Schwarz