Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book

Most of my commission work is surprisingly straightforward. People see something on my personal website (christophermschwarz.com) and say: Hey, I’d like you to build that again.

I build it. And I ship it to them.

Sometimes I get a request for something a little unusual. For example, this summer I’m working out the details of a three-tiered campaign chest. And I have a request for some Roorkhee ottomans. But those pieces are based firmly on my existing work.

This year, however, I got a very unusual order for a chair. It went something like this: Build me a chair, but I want it to advance your work as a designer. He gave me some thoughts on the woods he preferred and what he liked about my existing chair designs, but that was it.

I decided to use this opportunity to work out the details of an armchair for “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” I took an undercarriage design I’ve been working on for a couple years and refined it some more. Then I made the undercarriage parallel to the floor (instead of the seat), a detail I swiped from Chris Williams’s chairs. I shortened the armbow. Added some spindles. And did a major reshape of the crest rail (sometimes called a “comb”).

The chair looks good. It sits even better. But it’s not the armchair for “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” During construction of this chair, I devised a number of ways I could simplify this design so it would be much easier to build. And ease of building is one of the most important principles in the book.

So I am incredibly grateful to this customer who gave me the huge gift of freedom. And even though I failed to produce the bullseye design for “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” this chair is an important stepping stone to that design.

Which I started working on yesterday.

— Christopher Schwarz

With “Ingenious Mechanicks: Early Workbenches & Workholding” at the printer, we are focused on getting three more books to the printer:

“Hands Employed Aright” by Joshua Klein
“Slöjd in Wood” by Jögge Sundqvist
“Cut & Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology” by Richard Jones

And we are almost done with two streaming videos:

“Spindle Turning for Furniture” with Peter Galbert
“Make a Chair from a Tree” with Jennie Alexander

Luckily, those three books are in the hands of Kara Uhl, Megan Fitzpatrick, Meghan B. and Linda Watts. The videos are in the hands of John Hoffman and others. So I can focus on expanding “The Anarchist’s Design Book” for a late 2018 release.

The expanded edition will include projects that I’d intended to build for the book. But the book would have been so huge that it seemed crazy to add those additional projects. I guess I am now officially crazy.

The expanded edition will include the following staked projects: an armchair, a three-legged stool and a settee. And it will include the following boarded projects: a mule chest, a high settle, a settle chair and a sitting bench.

Note that if you bought the un-expanded edition of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” you will be able to download the expanded edition for free. (This will be true no matter where you bought the book, whether from us or from our retailers.) There will be no need to buy the expanded edition unless you want more ballast for your ship or insulation for your home.

— Christopher Schwarz

One of the ideas that’s been crashing around in my head for years is that vernacular furniture – what I call the “furniture of necessity” – is divorced, separate and independent from the high styles of furniture that crowd the books in my office.

This idea is not commonly held.

The conventional wisdom is this: Chippenton Sheradale invents a style of furniture that is Neo-Classical Chinese. So he publishes a pattern book to illustrate his new pieces, and the style becomes all the rage. All of the rich people want pieces in Neo-Classical Chinese to replace all the pieces in their houses that were Neo-Chinese Classical.

So the local cabinetmakers oblige and (as a result) can all afford new chrome rims for their carriages.

Rich rural farmers see the pieces in the new style and return home with the crazy idea that they should also have pieces in the latest Neo-Classical Chinese style. So they get Festus, the local cabinetmaker, to build them a Neo-Classical Chinese chair. But Festus uses Redneck Maple (Holdimus beericus) because Festus can’t get New Money Mahogany (Stickusis inbutticus).

Oh, and Festus takes some liberties with the new furniture style to please his rural customers, who want a series of cupholders in the arms that can accommodate a Bigus Gulpus.

Then the poor farmers see the Redneck Maple Neo-Classical Chairs owned by the rich farmers and ask their local carpenters to make copies, who also make changes to the design (a gun rack on the back). And then the dirt farmers see that chair. And so on.

Meanwhile, back in the city, a furniture designer draws up a pattern book for Neo-Gothic Romanian furniture. The cycle begins again.

All this sounds plausible because it has been written down in almost every book of furniture history ever published. The rich make something fashionable, and the poor imitate it until the rich become annoyed or bored. So then the rich find a new style, which the poor imitate again.

The only problem with this theory of degenerate furniture forms is that the furniture record doesn’t always go along with the theory.

I think there’s furniture that is divorced from the gentry. Furniture that is divorced from architecture. Instead of beginning with a pattern book, it begins with these questions: What do I need? What materials do I have? What can I make that will take little time to build but will endure (so I don’t have to frickin’ build it again)?

For several months now I have been plowing through “Welsh Furniture 1250-1950” (Saer Books) by Richard Bebb and have been thrilled to find someone who thinks the same way. Bebb has done the research on the matter when it comes to Welsh furniture. And he has convinced me that I’m not nuts.

In the first section of Vol. I, Bebb deftly eviscerates these ideas like a fishmonger filleting a brook trout. It’s an amazing thing to read. I’ll be writing more about Bebb’s research in future entries, but if you want to get right to the source, I recommend you snag your own copy of this impressive work.

— Christopher Schwarz