Category: Campaign Furniture

The Roorkhee chair is like my Catholic spouse – everyone in town is a cousin, second cousin or great cousin.

Here’s a real interesting Roorkhee cousin: A gunsmith’s chair that is on the showroom floor of William Evans Ltd. in London. These photos were taken by Australian woodworker and blogger Glen Rundell.

Though the William Evans chair has a lot in common with the Roorkhee (wooden frame, leather seat, portability) it also has different bones. Instead of breaking apart, this chair folds up like a chair at a church picnic. It has a framed seat and back instead of a simple piece of loose leather. And I could go on about the bamboo turnings and arms.

But I won’t. Bottom line, the two forms have a lot of attributes in common.

— Christopher Schwarz

This morning I mailed two Roorkhee chairs to customers on either side of the continent. It was a bit of a bittersweet job. I’m glad to have these chairs completed and out of the house. But the kids liked sitting in them, and I became enamored with them for some surprising reasons.

For one, they are damn comfortable – as comfy as a Morris chair. And they look good with our traditional/modernist furniture. But that’s not where my affection ends.

This week, my daughter Katy and I have been humping these chairs all over the city to photograph them – across parking lots, through parks and in and out of cars. I carried one of these chairs with one hand and while loaded with a complete photography and lighting rig. Even Katy was able to tote one of these chairs all day without any complaint – each chair weighs about 10 or 11 lbs.

And when it came time to pack them up to their final destinations, all the leather, brass and wood fit into a box measuring just 24” x 12” x 6”. With the packing material, the box weighed between 13 and 14 lbs. I could have packed them into an even smaller box if UPS had carried the right size.

Within a few minutes of packing up these chairs, I received two more orders for them.

I’m going to make only one more run of these chairs this year – I have books to edit, lay out and write. So if you want me to make one of these chairs for you, my recommendation is for your to make them for yourself. They are incredibly easy to construct, and my plans for them will be published in a fall issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine.

But if making them doesn’t interest you (bovine phobia?), here are the details for this last run of 2012:

• The chairs will be in genuine mahogany, finished with garnet shellac, just like the chairs shown above.

• All the hardware is solid brass or steel and aged to look vintage.

• On leather, I’ll offer a choice of colors for this run that ranges from the cognac color shown above to a rich black.

• The depth and width of the seat can be customized for you – the originals were quite narrow (about 16″ between the legs). The current run has about 17-1/2″ between the legs for “modern” hips. And I can go to about 19″ before engineering becomes an issue.

• The chairs are $750 each, delivered in the United States.

If you want one, let me know before June 30 at chris@lostartpress.com.

— Christopher Schwarz

As a photographer, nothing makes me happier than a cloudy day.

Clouds are the world’s most effective, least expensive and least predictable diffusers. They mute shadows, mellow colors and reduce contrast. Why am I telling this to a bunch of woodworkers? Well, as a magazine editor I received hundreds of “print my article” submissions that featured a beautiful highboy in a grassy setting with full sun.

I know what these guys were thinking. Taking the photo outdoors allowed them to use a fast shutter speed and small aperture without a tripod. It also made the furniture look unnatural, like a wookie in a thong. All the details of their piece are hidden in shadow (actually a good thing with thonged wookie pics). All the corners are blown out in high relief.

If you take photos of your work, buy a tripod. Period. Buy a good one (look for used Italian ones on Craigslist). Get a shutter release cable for your camera. Use a medium aperture (like f8) and let the shutter go as slow as it wants. Some photos I take require a three-second shutter speed.

And, if you are going to shoot outside, make sure your project belongs outside (birdhouse, planter, punji stick trap for opossums) and wait for a cloudy day – or shoot at first light in the morning or at last light in the evening so the light is more diffuse.

Today I took some photos of my Roorkhee chairs before sending them out to their new homes. The photos in the morning were with full sun and were a disaster – I was trying to find some dappled shade. After dinner I went out under some full cloud cover and tried again.

— Christopher Schwarz

My second version of a Roorkhee chair features details found on other traditional early 20th-century chairs – the most notable difference being that this chair does not have leather straps running left and right below the seat.

This strapless setup seems to be far more common in the historical photos I’ve examined of Roorkhee chairs at war and on safari.

The good news is that this chair sits just the same as the earlier version I built.

The even better news (for me) is that I have lots more variations to explore in the upcoming months because I have orders for several more of these chairs and will be teaching a class in making them next summer at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking.

The Roorkhee chair – sometimes called the Indian chair – was in production for much longer than my earlier sources suggested. I’ve found manufactured versions that look like they are from the 1970s. So there’s lots of territory for me and other woodworkers to trek through – different leg turnings, wood, hardware, leather strapping and so forth.

There’s even a version I’ve found that’s covered in fur. It will be great for your next winter adventure – or wife-swapping party I suppose.

My next variations will focus on the leather – I have some dyed leather sides coming that are waterproof and others that are dyed different colors on either side.

I still need to find a source for sewing some canvas seat covers, however. Otherwise I’m going to get a bad reputation in the bovine community.

— Christopher Schwarz

When I design furniture and use photographs of other pieces as a guide, I have to be careful. While photos are great for transmitting form, they often obscure details, texture or even the piece’s true color.

My brain also tends to fill in all these missing details with workmanship that is too perfect, too precious or just wrong. It’s like using a “paint bucket” tool in a drawing program instead of a piece of graphite pencil on paper.

This Campaign-style tea caddy that I studied yesterday at Tucker Payne Antiques in Charleston, S.C., is a good example of this phenomenon. I’ve seen photos of hundreds of caddies, but nothing beats spending time with the real thing.

The outside of the chest is pretty much as-expected. It’s when you lift the lid that the fun begins. The six hinged lids are – for me – what makes this piece special. I like the way the light plays over the frame-and-panel structures. And still after about 150 years of service, the lids fit well and move smoothly.

As you get closer, however, you discover that these lids are not made using frame-and-panel construction. Each lid is one piece of wood and all the details were carved or scratched into the work. This is straightforward work with a chisel and scratch stock – it would be a ridiculous amount of work to make 24 26 tiny mortise-and-tenon joints. And really quite unnecessary, as the smooth action of the lids will attest.

This is the kind of detail that in-person examination reveals and is why I’ll drive many hours to see it.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. I’ve been blogging about some of the other Campaign pieces I’ve encountered during this trip on my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine. You can read those entries here.