Category: Gibson Chair

Nearly everyone who has visited the workshop has commented on how I should change these Gibson chairs to make them more contemporary – or to alter them using my own design language.

Chamfer the underside of the seat. Add bevels and hardlines. Reduce the visual weight of the crest. Saddle the seat. Make one with three legs. And on and on.

I haven’t taken their advice. Here’s why.

When I seek to understand a form, I first want to get as close to building an original as possible. I attempt to replicate the surface finishes, the shapes and the joinery. And I try (as much as possible) to use tools and processes that were appropriate to the time the original was made.

I do this not to make a slavish reproduction. Slavish reproductions actually don’t interest me much. Instead, I want to learn what’s important about how the piece goes together. Making an original teaches me far more than just studying some photos and riffing all modern on them.

With the Gibson chair, there are some curious parts that aren’t obvious from photos. The two back sticks that aren’t angled are a different shape than their neighbors. They are deliberately oval and inserted into a deliberately ovaled and tapered mortise through the arm. Why? The taper is obvious. It locks the arm in place from below. The angled stick next to it locks the arm from above.

But why oval? After making three of these chairs, I think I’m closer to the answer, like something on the tip of your tongue. I suspect (but could be wrong as this is a blog entry and not a researched book after all) that a tapered oval is:

1. Easy to make with a round rasp. Tip the rasp forward and take a few strokes. Tip it back and make a few strokes. That gives you an oval mortise. Then you adjust the rasp’s angle and take out the high spot inside the mortise.
2. Making a round and tapered mortise instead would take a little more work and might weaken the arm because you have to remove more material from below the arm.

But I am going to make some more Gibsons and think some more with my hands (feel free to build one yourself and chat me up).

This chair is about 90 percent of where I want to be. I have the geometry of all the sticks working like the originals. To get to this point, I used lumber I had on hand – mostly scraps from other chairs. Now I am going to use riven material for the legs and sticks so I can get closer to the appearance of the legs and back sticks (and if I wanted to go full reproduction I might use a broom or tool handle as one of the legs – a somewhat common repair on originals).

This chair is going to Narayan Nayar to thank him for photographing the construction process. He picked out the nice color (it’s General Finishes’ “Basil” Milk Paint).

The next chair might get a more Irish green. Or it might end up natural, like some of the museum versions I’ve seen.

— Christopher Schwarz

Last week I built a second Irish Gibson chair while Narayan Nayar photographed the construction process.

Though this chair has its faults, it’s much closer in appearance and construction to the originals I studied at Mark Jenkinson’s place this fall. Mark and I are planning a short book on this chair that will be along the lines of John Brown’s “Welsh Stick Chairs” book. But that project will take a little time to research – plus I want to first build another dozen of these chairs.

I’m fairly happy with the construction process I’ve devised for these chairs. Making a Gibson is an easy chairmaking experience – perfect for the beginner. And that’s what makes this project particularly exciting.

I built this chair with only two electric tools: a small band saw and a battery drill. No shavehorse, lathe, drawknife, adze, scorp or travisher. No steambending or green woodworking. Every operation was done at a standard workbench with few specialty tools (a couple tenon cutters are helpful but not necessary).

The legs and sticks are sawn out (with special effort to get dead-straight grain) and then shaped with a jack plane and a block plane. The tenons can be shaped with a block plane or you can use a tenon cutter to speed the process.

The arms and seat are sawn out and shaped with a rasp and a spokeshave. The crest is glued up from three sticks of maple, sawn out on the band saw and then shaped with rasps and a scraper. (The crests of original Gibsons seem to have been cut from one huge chunk of wood – no laminations. I couldn’t get wood of that size at our lumberyard.)

I chose this tool set after looking at the tool marks on original Gibsons, which (we strongly think) were made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I found evidence of band saw marks and circular saw marks. The facets on the legs and sticks are clearly shaped by hand – not with a lathe. It could have been done with a drawknife, but I suspect that handplanes were just as likely to be used – especially to make the flats on the sticks for the back.

What’s wrong with my chair? I split one of the arms during assembly. One of the features of the Gibson is how two of back sticks are notched into the arms. The tension between the stick and the arm helps stabilize the chair. I added too much tension. Way too much tension, actually. Now I know what is too much and can dial it back for the next chairs.

Also, the back sticks seem a little thin to my eye. I probably shaved them a bit too much and need to start with wood that is 1/16” or 1/8” oversized in width and thickness.

But the chair sits well. The broken arm is repaired. And paint did the rest of the job.

— Christopher Schwarz

The highlight of my trip to the Republic of Ireland earlier this month was spending the day with Mark Jenkinson, a chair collector and cider maker in Slane.

Mark generously invited Lucy and me to spend the day looking at the chairs he had stored in his barn, to see the cider-making process at work and to eat a delicious “Spanish/Irish” stew for the midday meal.

The chair collection was staggering. I saw more vernacular stick chairs in one day than I have seen in the last 10 years combined. These were unrestored examples that Mark had collected during a life-long fascination with vernacular architecture and furniture, including six Gibson chairs.

“I’ve always been into old shit,” he said. “The older and wonkier the better. I started with vernacular architecture – Irish vernacular architecture. And part and parcel with that is vernacular furniture. And at first I bought antiques without a lot of focus.

“Then I was at an auction about 20 years ago and there were six Gibson chairs. They just jumped out at me.

“I bought a lot of stuff, perhaps the largest collection in the country – 100 to 150 chairs. I’m down to 60 or 70 now – not all stick chairs. Maybe half are stick chairs. What I have left is stuff that was too close to my heart to sell and stuff that didn’t sell at auction (in 2014). The best and worst you could say.”

The Gibson Chair
We don’t know a lot about Gibson chairs from official records as of yet. Mark says there’s a photo of a chairmaker – perhaps Mr. Gibson himself – taking the chairs to market circa 1880. But most of what we know about the chairs comes from the archaeological record.

They are stout and dramatic chairs, with a remarkable lean to the backrest of the chair – about 25°. The seats are wide.

Mark thinks they likely were made for the sturdy local farmers who would appreciate the comfort and solidity of a Gibson chair after a long day of work.

Despite the radical lean of the chair’s back, the Gibson doesn’t sit radically different. It’s not at all like a recliner. You can sit and have a great conversation in one. I know this because I do it everyday with the sorta-Gibson I’m sitting in right now.

Earlier this year I built a prototype of a Gibson based on photos (hundreds of photos) I had harvested from books and the internet. Mark helped guide me on the key points, and my Gibson sits almost exactly like the originals I sat in earlier this month.

But seeing the real thing. Touching it all over and simply getting a sense of it – that has changed the way I’m going to make my next set of Gibsons.

What’s different? Well the legs are certainly riven. All the components are different in cross-section and many feel like riven material – rough triangles, ovals, squares, slight rectangles. All with rounded arrises and dead-straight grain. Likely ash (Fraxinus excelsior). 

The sticks are likely ash as well, Mark says. The seats, arms and crest are usually sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus), which is known as sycamore maple in this country. It’s not like the sycamore in our country. It’s in the same genus as our soft maple or red maple and works the same way. Mark says he’s also seen elm seats.

In one room of Mark’s barn, he kept two museum-quality examples of Gibson. One had the same radical lean as mine. The other had a more upright back. They both sat extremely well. I measured these carefully and have been figuring out the design patterns embedded in each one. These chairs were likely made commercially. But there is a lot of handwork and variation to them. They were not manufactured.

In the next room, Mark had four Gibsons in various original conditions. Seeing unrestored chairs is a goldmine for a chairmaker. It allows you to see what held and what didn’t. The weaknesses and strengths of the designs are laid bare.

Examining the details was eye-opening. The way the back sticks locked to the arms is a key feature of these chairs, as is the oval shape of the stick that passes through the arms. These features tension the components above the seat.

What’s Next
After a long day of looking at chairs, Mark and I agreed that the Gibson chair is one of the most important unsung vernacular forms out there. And we are going to work together to change that.

Next month, I’m going to build a run of these chairs, and Narayan Nayar has agreed to photograph the process. Mark has agreed to be a co-author or consultant on the project, and I think we are headed for a very interesting book on these chairs.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. In case you were wondering, Mark’s cider is fantastic. His Cockagee cider has a pure apple essence. Not too sweet (like American ciders). Just a delight to drink. It’s a shame we can’t get it in the United States. But it’s also a good thing because I’d probably drink too much of it.