John Brown and Anne (now Sears) at Pantry Fields with the tractor that JB used to power his band saw.
The reason I make chairs is because I like to do it, therefore if I can do more of it I have more pleasure. I sell some chairs by word of mouth recommendation, by repeats or to friends or existing customers. In the last four or five years I have sold every chair I made. There are times when I could have sold more. Sometimes I don’t work as hard as I should. I still have no money, I’m always waiting for the next cheque, and I suspect I always will be, but I don’t worry. The difference between starvation and plenty is one chair.
— John Brown, Issue 28 of Good Woodworking magazine
DIY initials have entered our language. I remember being lost near Cardiff one day. I stopped to ask a local for directions. “Straight up, turn left at the Crown, than after a mile look on your left for a large Don’t Involve Yourself store – it’s just past there.”
— John Brown, Issue 27 of Good Woodworking magazine
Two of John Brown’s chairs at Country Workshops. Photo courtesy of Drew Langsner.
During the last two weeks I have been deep into designing Chris Williams’s book on John Brown. It’s great to see all these years of work from people all over the world come together on the page.
In addition to Chris’s detailed account of his life with John Brown and all the important details on chair construction, the book features essays from other important voices in John Brown’s chairmaking life. Anne Sears, JB’s wife while at Pantry Fields; David Sears, a nephew who built chairs with JB at Pantry Fields; Matty Sears, one of JB’s sons who made chairmaking tools for his dad; and Nick Gibbs, the editor who hired John Brown to write a column for Good Woodworking. We’re also using many linocut illustrations made by Molly Brown, one of JB’s daughters.
On top of all that, we have purchased the rights to publish 20 of John Brown’s best magazine columns. I’ve just finished laying out that chapter, and it’s 72 pages long – almost a novella. As a result, I’ve pulled a few choice quotes that I’ll publish here this week in an attempt to give you a taste of JB’s writing.
This leads me on to gripe about some of the woodworkers I come across. I hope you will forgive my opinion. When I talk to readers or get letters it often seems to be about the petty cash of woodwork (technical points about dovetails or getting joints to fit), but rarely about shape, proportion or colour. I don’t think joints are that important. I would prefer to see woodworkers look at the total picture, is the piece they have just made beautiful, will it hold together, will it do the job it was made for?
Woodworkers don’t buy my chairs, but they spend ages looking at the details of construction and then frown disapprovingly. They want engineering perfection. People who buy my chairs do so for two main reasons. Firstly and by far the most important point, they buy because they like the look of them. Secondly they buy them because they like sitting in them. They rarely inspect the joints. They think they look good, they think they will do the job they are made to do and even though the parts don’t fit particularly well, they are strong enough!
The book should be off to the printer in January and released by March. I’ll have more details as they become available.
It’s funny how words don’t change but the reader does. About 18 years ago, I can distinctly recall reading John Brown’s column titled “An Uncertain Element of Success” in Good Woodworking (April 2001, issue 107) and being blown away.
The column opens with a poem by D.H. Lawrence (who the heck begins a woodworking column with a poem?) and delves into a discussion of handwork and mistakes of the hand. Because the poem is about as good a chairmaking poem as you’ll find, here it is:
What is He?
What is he?
– A man, of course.
Yes, but what does he do?
– He lives and is a man.
Oh quite! But he must work. He must have a job of some sort
– Why?
Because obviously he’s not one of the leisured classes.
– I don’t know. He has lots of leisure. And he makes quite beautiful chairs.
There you are then! He’s a cabinet maker.
– No, no
Anyhow a carpenter and a joiner.
– Not at all.
But you said so
– What did I say?
That he made chairs and was a joiner and carpenter
– I said he made chairs, but I did not say he was a carpenter.
All right then he is just an amateur?
– Perhaps! Would you say a thrush was a professional flautist, or just an amateur?
I’d say it was just a bird
– And I say he is just a man.
All right! You always did quibble.
John Brown opened this particular column with: “A good friend told me about this poem.” And at the time I thought nothing of it. As it turns out, the “good friend” was Chris Williams, who is writing the book “The Life & Work of John Brown,” which we hope to release early next year.
Chris was more than just a good friend to JB, and he is a chairmaker who is both attached to John Brown through long history and is apart from him in a lot of ways. When we set out to publish this book about John Brown, the early discussions were to provide a woodworking biography of John Brown and show how his work had progressed incredibly since the publication of “Welsh Stick Chairs” in 1990.
What has transpired since is difficult to explain in words. Chris Williams is forever tethered to John Brown, and his forthcoming book will be true to the spirit and memory of this great man.
But what I have learned during the last four years of knowing Chris is that he is more than just an observer of the John Brown story. He is today a very different chairmaker than John Brown. Here’s my best explanation. I’m sure I’ll get it wrong.
Chris is forever indebted to JB. Every sentence he speaks about chairmaking is suffused with the foundation that JB laid. But Chris’s work travels in a different arc than his teacher’s. And this is at the absolute insistence of JB himself. You’ll see all this in Chris’s book.
In the meantime, read the poem a few more times. Scrawl it on the wall of your shop. And wait patiently for Chris’s book.
Every month in the late 1990s, an oversized manila envelope would land on my desk at Popular Woodworking magazine. When that happened, I’d finish editing the sentence I was working on, put down my red pen and rip into the package.
Inside was the newest Good Woodworking magazine with the latest John Brown column. I would read the article several times. Photocopy it for my records (I still have those photocopies). And then pass the magazine to one of my fellow editors who would read it for the tool reviews or how-to-make chopsticks article.
I adored John Brown’s column for two reasons. One, his writing was outrageous, even by the typically wilder U.K. standards. This gave me confidence and license to loosen up my own woodworking writing so I didn’t sound like an instruction manual for a toaster oven.
Two, the chairs. Gawd, I loved the chairs he showed in the articles. While I adored the chairs shown in his 1990 book, “Welsh Stick Chairs,” the chairs in his magazine articles were far more interesting because John Brown had learned so much in the decade since writing his book.
Today I went to the mailbox and there was an oversized manila envelope with a U.K. postmark waiting for me. I put down my satchel and ripped into the package. Inside was a mint August 1999 issue of Good Woodworking magazine. And on page 50 was the John Brown article titled “Of All the Works of Man.” One of my favorites.
We’re collecting these vintage magazines to help illustrate the upcoming book by Christopher Williams titled “The Life & Work of John Brown.” The book will feature 20 of JB’s best columns. We purchased the rights to reprint these articles for the book, but the publisher who now owns the rights to the articles doesn’t have the images from the columns. So I need to invoke some digital trickery to illustrate John Brown’s columns for the book.
It’s a bit weird to see this article again after 20 years and in mint condition – like encountering an old friend who hasn’t aged a day. (And who is still a dang interesting guy.)
