Plate 14. St. Fagans. “Pura Wallia …” These three arm-chairs are all of similar type: (a) is from Caernarvonshire; (b) from Cardiganshire, and (c) from Radnorshire. They represent a total Welshness from the mid 18th century.
Tracing the provenance of individual country chairs is a complicated business, probably with few exceptions, impossible. There is no scholarly standard work to refer to. Chairs with similar characteristics are found in different parts of the country (Plate 14). They cannot, with any certainty, be regionalised. Carmarthenshire, with large areas of good farming land and a high proportion of better houses, is known for the quality and elegance of its locally-built furniture. Chairs found in the county, whilst unmistakably Welsh, have a greater sophistication than those made in the more remote parts further north (Plate 20). Dating Welsh stick chairs is very difficult. Whether these Carmarthenshire chairs were made concurrently with their more ‘folk art’ cousins from further north is difficult to say, but it looks as though they might have been. There is the possibility of another regional style. Some Welsh chairs have a wide lozenge- shaped seat, with only three or four untapered, heavier long sticks at the back. This type appears to come from the north (Plate 8, a & c).
Plate 20. St. Fagans. A pair of chairs from Carmarthenshire, probably dating from the last quarter of the 18th century.
As the standard of living improved, throughout Wales primitive furniture and chairs were made. By whom and for whom it is difficult to say. For certain, these items did not find their way into the squire’s house and they were almost entirely rural. The one thing about the chairs is that they all fulfilled the strict definition of ‘Windsor’, in that they grew from a solid wooden seat, having legs and sticks socketed into that seat. The termination of the long back sticks was normally a comb, that is a piece of wood, sometimes curved, sometimes straight, into which the tops of the sticks were mortised. Rarely, a few later chairs have a steamed bow or hoop (Plates 16 & 20). Many of the chairs terminated at the arm, that is the rear sticks did not come up to the level of shoulders or head. These arm-chairs, quite common, are the forerunner of the smoker’s bow or captain’s chair (Plate 14).
Plate 8. St. Fagans. (a) and (c) are examples of chairs which seem to come from mid to north Wales and have three or four heavy untapped sticks; (b) is a handsome chair with a slightly ‘saddled’ seat. Chair (d) has great charm, and has been ‘modified’. The heavy arm and turned posts are interesting.
What is it that makes these chairs so attractive that now they have become highly sought after collectors’ items? Could it be some extension of the old Celtic art which makes them so appealing? – a naive folk art uncluttered by association with the contemporary urban styles. Many characteristics of the design are extremely good, and represent what we look for today in a well proportioned chair. The most obvious feature is that the legs are set well into the seat with a good rake. The English chair has the legs at the corners, and they are more upright. This is not so elegant. Stretchers to strengthen the legs were sometimes used; there seem to be no rules. When English goods and ideas reached the country village, the rural craftsman was influenced to use some design, and some of the chairs began to lose their spontaneity (Plate 16).
Plate 16. Windsor Handbook. This chair illustrates what happens when a country-maker tries to copy his more sophisticated cousins. This is an English chair, made in Wales.
Rural poverty and religious bigotry have triggered much migration of Welsh people, mainly to the New World. In the 1670s, Quakers from Montgomeryshire and Meirionethshire were central to the formation of Pennsylvania. William Penn’s deputy was a Welshman called Thomas Lloyd. Later came the ‘Welsh Tract’ and, in 1786, it was claimed that there were over 900 Welsh Baptist chapels in Pennsylvania and the adjoining states. Welsh shipowners ran a continual service between Pennsylvania and Wales. From north Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire large scale migrations took place to the Welsh Liberty settlement. Printing in the Welsh language went on in Pennsylvania into this century.
Plate 15. “Windsor Handbook.” The English chair. Wallace Nutting was very unkind about this chair. There are much worse shapes of English Windsor. This one is quite nice. Note the splat.
Throughout the United States, Windsor chairs are much more widely seen than in Britain. Furthermore, they are to be found in the best parlours. The class distinction does not exist there. In court-houses and banqueting rooms, hotels and country clubs, American Windsors are in all the best places. There are many unique American-designed Windsors, and the industry or craft started in Pennsylvania. This in itself would not be important were it not for the fact that in two respects American Windsor chairs are similar to Welsh stick chairs. Firstly, there are no splats in the back of either sort. The splat is peculiar to English regional chairs and Wycombe chairs. Secondly, a common feature is the rake, or splay, of the legs. A collector of American chairs, the Reverend Wallace Nutting, wrote a book on the subject in 1917. He illustrates a bow-back English Windsor chair with a pierced splat (Plate 15). Under ‘merit’ he says, “The English Windsors lack grace. Observe how stubby and shapeless the arms are. The bow is very heavy without being stronger for its purpose than a lighter one. The splat is peculiar to the English type. The legs are a very poor feature. They are too nearly vertical, and start too near the corner of the seat for strength or beauty, and their turnings are very clumsy …” The oft repeated statement that American Windsors derive from the English chair could be in error. For historical reasons, and because of similarities in design, there seems to be a more direct link between the Welsh chair and the American Windsor. Perhaps the English version is the cousin, and the Welsh chair is the father!
During his long career as a chairmaker, Chris Williams has heard stories of people filling up shipping containers of Welsh stick chairs and sending them to the United States. (You also hear stories – shudder – of people chopping them up and burning them for fuel.)
Last week, I saw another piece of evidence that the migration of Welsh stick chairs to North America was something that has really happened. As I was packing up to leave the shop at Wyatt Childs Inc. last week after a week of building French workbenches, Bo Childs drove up the shop in his white pickup truck with two stick chairs in the bed.
His father had brought them over from the U.K., and he wanted me to have a look at them.
We took the chairs over to the lawn behind his house and gave them a quick inspection. I was trying to get on the road to catch a plane to London (crazy life), so I didn’t get to document them completely. Maybe next time.
What I saw was one chair (above) that clearly is a Darvel chair, a Scottish stick chair. And based on the turnings, it’s likely one that’s earlier in their history.
For me, what was most interesting about the Darvel chair was the spindle deck. It’s slightly raised and rabbeted, like the deck on my chairs. I’ve not seen this detail on an old chair. I hope to investigate this chair a little more next time I’m in Georgia and can look for tool marks.
The other chair bears all the hallmarks of a Welsh stick chair (Chris Williams also said it looked Welsh to him). The armbow looked like it was made from a curved branch. And the seat’s shape matched the arm. The seat itself is massive and thick with a slight bevel on its underside.
Also interesting to see was that some of the mortises in the arms were blind. And when we looked under the arm it was apparent that the maker had made a few mistakes in locating these blind mortises (there was also evidence of this in the chair’s seat).
These “errors” didn’t take anything away from the appearance of the chair. I love it.
Other details I noticed on my quick investigation: The chair had an H-stretcher and was missing the middle bar of the H. Also, what is difficult to convey with these photos is how massive the components are. The legs are quite thick – much thicker than I would typically make in a chair.
As always, seeking out and encountering the “real thing” is an education that’s worth more than 1 million clicks on the internet.
When I built my first stick chair in 2003, I was so happy with the result that I wanted to build that exact same form 100 times or more.
Today – maybe 100 chairs later – I roughed out a seat and contemplated how I could make this chair unlike every other chair I’d made before. So I changed the rake and splay of the legs. A lot. The undercarriage will be new. Ditto the arrangement of the sticks. The armbow will be the same (that’s because I built the arm several weeks ago when I made a run of arms). And I haven’t decided what to do with the crest rail.
Chairmaking has instilled a restlessness in me that I don’t feel when I build casework. When I build a campaign secretary, it always comes out similar to my other campaign secretaries. Sure, there are variations, but it’s not like I feel a burning desire to make a secretary with doodle-nut angles or details I’ve never seen before.
But it’s all I think about when I look at a pile of chair parts. How can I assemble these in a different way that will scratch an itch I have about negative space, an hourglass shape or some hard line/soft line fantasy?
When John Brown built his second Welsh stick chair, he tried to make it come out like his first chair. But it didn’t. Eventually he embraced this aspect of of the chair. No two should be alike. Maybe they come out different because we are human and it’s a hand-tool process. Or maybe there’s something else going on that I can’t put my finger on.
Chris Williams knows what I’m talking about. He preaches it all the time.
It doesn’t look it from the photo, but this chair is going to be a bit weird.
On Saturday, Chris Schwarz and I had our biennial chair conversation. I subjected him to a mind probe about his recently purchased a Welsh stick chair and an Irish Gibson stick chair he is currently building.
Suzanne: Please confirm if you have more Welsh chairs (made by other chairmakers) than house cats.
Chris: We are at a 2:5 chair:cat ratio. To be honest, Chris’s (Williams) chair has melted into the fabric of our daily lives and furniture because it isn’t a “room broach,” like so many pieces of custom furniture are. That’s the beauty of these chairs – they are so charitable. Welsh chairs like the one I purchased last week are as rare as hen’s teeth – especially here in the States. It’s a bit odd seeing it in an American house. I put it by my fireplace so it might feel a bit more comfortable.
Suzanne: Your newest chair was purchased during your visit with John Porritt. Not to get too personal but to use a term referenced in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” (p.50) did you experience the “tingling in the bathing suit area” when you saw this chair? What struck you about the chair?
Chris: My first sight of the chair was less like a tingling and more like the aggressive groping I received from Kym Harper during 8th grade.
It was the second-best chair that John Porritt owned (the best one was in his house, see the gallery below). That chair is good enough to be in a museum.
Chris’ new Welsh chair.
What I like about Welsh stick chairs, especially the one I bought, is their motion. Most chairs are designed to look fairly balanced and stable to give you the confidence to sit in them. Welsh chairs, on the other hand, have a wildness.
The chair rakes back aggressively. It suggests it will be a comfortable chair to lean back in. And it delivers on the promise.
Also, there are many little details of this chair that deserve study. Some of the tenons into the arms are blind – not through. That’s quite unusual, and I am eager to work out the best way to build a replica. The crest rail has some subtle shaping that is difficult to photograph. The ends have a bit of a waterfall-like curve.
The armbow is clearly a bent stick that has been resawn, scarfed and bookmatched. It’s just a lovely piece of work. The only bummer about the chair is the shiny finish – likely shellac – which looks a bit wrong to me. I’m going to live with it for a while before I consider cutting it back. I’m not eager to mess with antique furniture as that’s not my specialty.
John Porritt’s chair.
Top view, Chris’ new chair.
Side view, new chair.
Suzanne: You have given a lively description of why this chair has such a strong pull for you. I’m looking forward to reading about more details after you have spent more time with the chair. As for the finish, live with the chair for a long while before thinking about a change.
When comparing the new Welsh chair with your American Welsh chair you wrote the chairs look distantly related, but also your chair is “uptight” in comparison to the old chair. That made me take a second look at the side view photo of the chairs. The older chair looks more relaxed and your chair perhaps has a stiffness to it. What elements of your chair do you think make it “uptight” and are you OK with that?
Chris: There are many elements of my chair that are more “uptight” in the craftsmanship. Some are obvious and some aren’t.
Obvious: I use hard edges and facets on every possible surface. I don’t like things that are rounded over. Even my seat, which is saddled and curved, has a sharp line surrounding it. The legs and stretchers are faceted – not turned or smoothed to round. I don’t round over the arms. My crest – same thing.
Less obvious: My sticks are consistent and have little tapering or entasis. One of the hallmarks (and charms) of an old Welsh stick chair are the small handmade inconsistencies in the construction. The sticks are not as regular and may taper or have a lot (or no) entasis. Also, I shoot for precise spacing of my sticks, which adds to the overall sharpness of the design.
I am, of course, happy with my design. It reflects the way I approach furniture, writing, cooking, music and making my bed. I like my desk to be clean….
But, I would like to be able to work in the older mode as well. This will require just as much thought and work. It’s not a sloppiness or a shortcut.
Suzanne: Adding to the sense of relaxation in the Welsh chair are the spindles under the arm. They tilt back in concert with the back of the chair and are another suggestion offered by the chair to sit down and lean back.
Your chair by itself is clean and it is evident you have thought through every detail. When placed next to the older Welsh chair the hard details of your chair stand out. If we were looking at two humans they would be an old pensioner next to an edgy teenager.
A few more questions about details. When you are working to make each detail exact and as precise as possible are you losing spontaneity?
Chris: Probably. But I think spontaneity in furniture should be in very low doses. Some people can make big design swings (and succeed) while building an object. I am not that kind of designer or builder.
Suzanne: Using pre-made dowels for spindles saves time, and you aren’t trying to make replicas, but does it take away from the Welsh aesthetic of the chair?
Chris: Perhaps. I use factory dowels in the classroom to remove a barrier that many first-time chairmakers face, which is the difficulty of making long, thin sticks. I make my own sticks for customer chairs. Even so, every stick – factory made or not – is scraped and shaped to fit. They do give a very consistent place to start, and they do contribute to the overall consistent look of the finished chair, like it or not.
Suzanne: Adding the sharp edge around the seat echoes the sharp edge of the armbow but does it make the chair more inviting?
Chris: I think the sharp edge around the seat removes the mushy line I see on many chairs. I hate mushy lines. My opinion is either have a sharp line or blend the seat and spindle deck together completely. The former is my approach because I like to repeat design elements up and down a chair. The second option (no line whatsoever) is one employed by old chairmakers who weren’t trying to show off.
Suzanne: You also wrote in a recent post you obsess over every detail. When do you know when a chair is finished and you can comfortably walk away?
Chris: For me, I spend a long time looking at my work from different vantage points and in different lights. I’m looking for things I can improve. I keep working until there’s nothing left that I can improve.
That doesn’t mean the results are perfect. There are lots of things on a finished chair that are not perfect. Those imperfections are details I cannot repair without starting over. A good example of this might be a wedge that is 5° off the axis I was shooting for. I can’t fix that without destroying the entire thing.
For me, making furniture is as much about looking as it is about doing.
Suzanne: I think it is the same for craftsmen and artists in any field. Step back, step away then come back to see what needs to be tweaked before saying the chair is done. You will also have a list of changes for the next chair because chair begets chair, no?
Chris: Yup. I have already made changes to my American Welsh Stick Chair. I incorporated those into a chair that hasn’t yet been made public. I also have a couple minor changes to make to the arms in future chairs. I don’t think it ever ends. Heck, I still make changes to my tool chests….
Suzanne: On to the Gibson, a variation of the Irish hedge chair! In “Irish Country Furniture 1700-1950,” Claudia Kinmonth wrote, “…although the origin of the name, which may be associated with Oldcastle, county Meath, is unclear. This design is distinguished from others by the distinctive ‘W’ (or less often an ‘M’) shaped arrangement of back spindles…Gibson chairs were once common in county Cavan, although they were generally made in northeast Leinster, especially counties Louth, Monaghan, Meath and Westmeath.”
The first Irish stick chair I found was painted green and not a Gibson but I loved it. Then, you turned up a true Gibson (although not painted green) and I liked it even more. These are wide and open-armed chairs. You have started making your first Gibson chair. What are your thoughts so far?
Chris: I’m in the middle of building the first one, and today I fit the arms to the front spindles.
A couple things really stand out for me with this chair. It seems to me to be an all-wooden version of a Morris Chair. The geometry and seat height (and other factors) give me the same feeling as when I first started making Morris Chairs in 1997 or 1998. The back leans 25°. That’s insane. Plus the seat is low – 15”. The position of the arms is similar. The extreme (24”) width of the seat is also similar to Morris Chairs. I’m not saying one influenced the other but the similarities are remarkable.
The best part of building the chair is trying to get into the heads of the chair’s original makers. This is necessary because there is obviously a right order of operations and a wrong order of operations when making this chair.
After I drew the chair full-size on paper and started to work it out at my bench, I received little flashes of communication across the centuries from Ireland. Things that aren’t completely obvious.
Like today: Mounting the arms on the front sticks first allows you to easily find the 25° angle of the two outside back sticks. Once you drill those, then it’s a piece of cake to drill the ‘W’-shaped sticks.
In other words, once you get into the briar patch, it’s obvious how to get out. Until then, it looks like a nut-doodle chair that is hard to build. It isn’t.
Mostly, I’m looking forward to sitting in it. My spine has a lot of questions.
Suzanne: I have to take you to task for your “Do the Irish have big butts in general” question on an Instagram post last week. I believe you could have used “generous bottoms” or “perhaps a bit wide abaft the beam” instead. The Gibson is a big welcoming chair and nothing wrong with that, boyo.
Chris: Apologies. But could you answer the question?
Suzanne: I’ll do some research and get back with you much, much later.
Chris Williams, your Welsh brother, will be returning to Covington later this month. What are you most looking forward to during his visit?
Chris: Mostly the arguing about the chairs. We work in very different ways. And we see the chair in different ways. He has baggage I can’t claim. And I have my own personal hang-ups. In the end, we’re both better for it. And I don’t have anyone else that I can talk to about this stuff who isn’t bored out of their minds after five minutes of splay-splaining. So my relationship with Chris is a healthy and wonderful thing. It is one of the greatest gifts the internet has given me.
Suzanne: What is the perfect place to put your chair (either one). Sit down and get comfortable. What are you drinking and what are you reading?
Chris: I like to be alone. The dream is to put it by a fireplace. Three-legged cat on my shoulder. Glass of red at hand. And a book of short stories by Wendell Berry.
Suzanne: My Welsh chair is by a fireplace, bottle of red and rereading “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” The Gibson under a tree, sipping a fine whiskey, memorizing “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” a cat sprawled next to me (because the chair has plenty of room).
The gallery has two more images of the green Irish stick chair and a gathering of Gibsons.
I’ve seen a lot of slideshows of people’s incredible, breathtaking and life-changing work.
For the first 50 years of my life, I watched and was inspired. Graceful furniture forms. Astonishing craftsmanship. Shimmering finishes. All of it made me say: I want to go there. And in my heart, I thought I could.
But something happened in my 50th year. I lost my father, a good friend and some other people I cared about deeply. And the slideshows took a turn in my mind. Instead of seeing what was possible, I saw what was out of reach. Perhaps I started too late. Maybe I don’t have the natural gifts. Or some such.
If you’re a therapist or a kind soul you might disagree. But the rest of us know that there is a certain grinding of the gears – a metal calculus – that says, “This is a hill you cannot climb.” So we spin our wheels at lower elevations and try to find somewhere interesting to steer the bicycle.
On my way home from Fine Woodworking LIVE, I was invited to visit the home and shop of John Porritt, a chairmaker and restorer who works in a picturesque barn behind his home in Upstate New York. On the shop floor in front of his neatly piled stacks of old timber, John had arrayed a handful of original Welsh, American and English chairs he’s collected during his career.
We spent a couple delightful hours examining them and discussing their merits and demerits. As we were leaving the barn to look at some chairs in his house, John said that he might be willing to sell a chair or two.
I froze in my tracks and pointed to the chair pictured at the top of this entry.
“Would you sell that one?” I asked. We shook hands on the price.
The chair is remarkable for a number of reasons I’ll will discuss in a later blog entry. But what struck me was how similar the antique chair’s angles were to my chairs. They look distantly related.
The big difference between the two chairs is the hand that made them. My chair is rather uptight in its craftsmanship. John said as much about my chairs, “You have the angles right, but the older chairs are looser.” It was merely an observation, he wasn’t trying to convince me to change.
“If your chairs are selling,” he said, “Then you are doing something right.”
But I see this as an area where I can grow. I am uptight and obsessive about my chairs. Even if I start with riven stock and work by hand, I fuss over every facet until the chair has a silhouette that is sharp, for lack of a better word. Can I loosen up? Not sloppiness, but an acceptance of the way that work progresses when it is shaped by hand. To allow it to happen instead of bending it to my will.
This week I have a vernacular Irish chair on my workbench. I’m building it in anticipation of a research trip to Ireland this fall for a book. The chair isn’t for a customer so there’s no one standing over the project and expecting a certain result.
Except for me, of course.
This afternoon I’ll take up my block plane to shape the legs and we’ll see what happens.
