Category: Campaign Furniture

The principles behind the Roorkee chair can be easily adapted to other forms of furniture besides chairs. Its loose-tenon joinery has been used to make beds and even tables on occasion.

Today, however, I saw my first Roorkee footstool.

This weekend I visited the new Lee Valley store in Vaughan, Ontario, to deliver a couple talks on workbench design and campaign furniture. For my talk on campaign furniture, I brought along five campaign pieces (Me to border guard: “No, I am not invading your country”). But I didn’t have a Roorkee chair with me – my last one sold to a customer.

So I was happy when local woodworker Vincent brought along two Roorkee chairs he had made – plus a Roorkee footstool that was built using the same principles.

Made using purpleheart, the stool had a thigh strap and a slanted seat cover, just like a Roorkee chair. The rest of the attendees were gaga over it, taking photos and trying it out.

Vincent also made some nice modifications to the original Roorkee plan. Instead of turning round stretchers, he made his stretchers octagonal and terminated with a tapered tenon. They looked very nice – I’ll have to try that on a future chair.

Also, the “grip” turning at the top of the chair bowed out slightly in the middle instead of being straight. It looked nice and felt nice in the hand as well.

All in all, the new Lee Valley store is quite nice. The company is trying out some new things with this store. So if you are ever driving north of Toronto on the 400, be sure to stop and chck it out.

— Christopher Schwarz

Free domestic shipping for “Campaign Furniture” ends at midnight tonight, April 5. After that, shipping and handling will be $8.

Eight dollars is a lot of money (though not as much as $300). That $8 could be a six pack of snooty beer. Or a 12 pack of stuff that has already been through the hobo once.

Save your $8 here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Several of my friends and colleagues have been surprised by how well our new book, “Campaign Furniture,” has been selling.

“That’s amazing,” they say, “for a style of furniture that is so ____________ .” Fill in the blank with any word that is a synonym for “obscure.”

The truth is that campaign furniture has been obscure only in the realm of furniture-makers. Everytime I go to an antique mall, I find at least one piece of campaign-style furniture (whether the seller actually realizes it or not). Plus, I can always find reproductions at used furniture stores. And 1stdibs.com is awash in the stuff.

The British campaign style is generally assumed to have been popular during 1740 to 1940, when the British Empire owned a huge chunk of the globe. That’s a huge run for any furniture style. American Arts & Crafts furniture, by way of comparison, had a much shorter run. About 50 years.

Shaker furniture has a similar timeline to that of campaign furniture. However, it is my educated guess that there are far more pieces of campaign furniture out there than Shaker furniture. This is not to say that the styles are “equal,” whatever that means. But that campaign-style stuff is anything but obscure.

In fact, many times campaign pieces are stealthily hiding as non-campaign pieces. Simon and Sean Clarke at Christopher Clarke Antiques Ltd. had many stories for us about how they encountered chairs, Davenports and tables that were knock-down campaign pieces, but the owners had no idea that their pieces could be taken to pieces.

Now, truth be told, I am also surprised by how well the “Campaign Furniture” book is selling. But not because the style is obscure, but because the book is about a style of furniture. All books about a furniture style are doomed to sell worse than books about birdhouses.

But I was heartened – nay, almost Unicorn-fartin’-a-rainbow ecstatic – by Joel Moskowitz’s assessment of the book: “(O)ne of the most important books on woodworking to appear in the last generation.” Joel is a tough customer.

— Christopher Schwarz

One of the interesting forms I didn’t get to discuss in “Campaign Furniture,” is the portable library writing table. It’s typically a three-piece affair – the desktop lifts off the two pedestals for travel.

The version shown above is from the 1907 Army & Navy Co-Operative Society catalog, though the form appears over and over again in many of the catalogs.

It also appears as a reproduction at times. And this form is the ancestor of the modern campaign desk that is shown on sawhorses at Pottery Barn etc.

Mark Firley at The Furniture Record shows a particularly nice antique version in his blog today. The top surface of the desk tilts, there is a secretary gallery and the drawers in the pedestal units are protected by drawers. Check it out here.

And by the way, free domestic shipping for “Campaign Furniture” ends on Saturday. So if you were waiting to hide the charge on your April statement….

— Christopher Schwarz