If you’re a vernacular furniture fanatic, or you live in Tasmania, you may already know what a Jimmy Possum chair is. If you’re one of the other 7.4 billion people on earth, buckle up and read on about my journey to Jimmy Possum: an unbroken tradition.
With international borders reopened, wanderlust took my wife, Kathy, and me to the farthest reaches of Earth (for us): Tasmania. We landed in Hobart on a dark, rainy December night. After picking up our diesel 4-wheel-drive rental, we set off into the rural part of the main island. Using all my skill and every last ounce milliliter of focus, I narrowly avoided the mobs of wallabies zig-zagging through the country roads.
Chairmaking class started the next morning when Stanley, the shop dog, dragged us out of bed. Jon Grant teaches a number of American Windsor chair classes in Melbourne, but if you ever get the chance, building a chair with him at his home studio in Tassie is a one-of-a-kind experience in one of the most uniquely beautiful places on earth. Being half a world away from the States, Jon and I agreed that it would make more sense for us to build a Tasmanian chair.
The George Peddle chair came to prominence around the same time as the Jimmy Possum (“JP”) chair, but in a different part of Tasmania and for a different purpose. If you looked at the photo above and thought “Hey! That’s not a stick chair,” hold your (shave)horses, we’re almost to that part.
I learned a number of things in Jon’s studio, including (but not limited to):
1. How to turn wood 2. Tasmanian blackwood is beautiful 3. Wallaby patties are delicious 4. There’s an ongoing JP chair exhibit in Launceston.
If someone asked me what a JP chair looks like, I’d say it looks almost like the love child of an Adirondack lounge chair and an Irish stick chair. If someone asked me how to pronounce Launceston, I’d probably just embarrass myself.
If you do an internet search for “Jimmy Possum,” you’ll readily find the legend of the man himself. For the purposes of this post, it’s sufficient to know that:
1. He was not a possum or a professionally trained chairmaker 2. The JP chairmaking tradition is alive and well. In the 35 minutes I had at the exhibit before speeding to the airport, here’s what I saw.
The Legs The defining characteristic of the JP chair is the fancy leg design. The four legs suspend the seat, pass through it, and support the arms to boot. The lack of stretchers, combined with the rake, creates a lot of negative space under the chair, highlighting the smooth, shapely legs. If you’re planning to build one yourself, make sure that leg grain is straight!
The Joinery It’s not obvious at first glance, but this chair has more pins than granny’s sewing kit. Legs meet seat? Pins. Legs meet arms? Pins. Sticks meet seat? Pins. Sticks meet crest? Pins. You get the idea.
Many of the arms and crests are secured with a “belt and suspenders” approach, having both pins and wedges, but the curiosities don’t end there. A number of JP chairs sport through-tenons with just pins, no wedges. The early JP chairmakers lived in or around small farming settlements, so I suspect the chairs were built using techniques the makers knew from their trades.
The Seat Many of the seats are a single board, and a lot of them appear to be rived. These days, people rarely build chairs using green wood seats, and you can see why in the photo above. On the other hand, most of these 100-year-old leg-to-seat joints are fantastically tight from the green seat drying and shrinking around the leg.
Know Your Neighbor It may be difficult to tell from the photos, but the chairs range drastically in size. To me, this suggests that most of these chairs were made for friends, family, the maker themselves, or by commission, rather than as spec chairs. This isn’t surprising, given that the town of Deloraine (where JP chairs are believed to have originated) had a population of 836 as of the 1881 census.
All Rake, No Splay If you hate resultant angles (sorry Chris), this is the chair for you! The nature of the floor-to-arm legs prevents the chair from having any splay. If you’re having trouble visualizing it, draw a JP chair with splayed legs, then try to figure out where you’d sit.
The Similarities Despite being on the other side of the world, parts of these chairs have some similarities to historical vernacular chairs from the northern hemisphere:
• The front edge of many seats is natural, not cut, creating a bevel. • The seats are not saddled. • The arms intersect the outermost back sticks, similar to an Irish stick chair. • They were made from local timber, then (in many cases) painted green.
All coincidence? Unlikely. In 1870, just more than 40 percent of the population of Tasmania was made up of immigrants. Some were gold miners from China and mainland Australia, but the majority were from the U.K. (which at the time included all of Ireland).
I find the JP chairs beautiful, but also meaningful. They began popping up around 1870 (or perhaps a little earlier), only a few decades after colonists settled in Tasmania. Most of the early years were likely spent fighting the native Palawa people, figuring out how to eat the local plants, farming in unfamiliar soil and generally struggling to find a way of life. The early Europeans sent to Tasmania were primarily convicts, but not the murder-y kind. They were guilty of “petty crimes” like stealing bread, committing fraud or sharing political opinions. I like to think of JP chairs as a sign of life improving for the settlers – early evidence of leisure activities.
The JP chair is a form of folk art and has a healthy bit of tradition associated with it. I’ve never spoken directly with any of the families who have been making JP chairs continuously for more than 100 years, but I suspect they’d tell you not to touch a lathe. Historically, a drawknife is used to shape the Tasmanian Blackwood legs and spindles.
There’s a lot to learn from building a traditional form the “right” way, but I also have a habit of doing things my own way, so I’ve decided to build two chairs. I don’t have access to green wood, so I’ll start by setting aside a large chunk of kiln-dried ash to Galbertize*. While that’s marinating, I’ll get to work making an “Amurican” version from walnut using handplanes and a scorp. Maybe I’ll even add stretchers, like the Obnoxious Yank that I am.
If you have the chance, go check out the JP exhibit before it ends in May. If you can’t get there in time, renew that passport and go to Tasmania anyway. You’ll see, among other things, some incredibly humbling trees.
– Lewis Laskin
* Galbertization: Pete Galbert lays out a method for rehydrating kiln-dried wood to be worked with a drawknife in his “Chairmaker’s Notebook.”
Bonus Content: Before today, this next piece of knowledge was only available to those who live in or road trip through Australia. The local market price of a Bag O’ Poo ranges from $2 to $4 USD, depending on provenance (sheep, horse, or cow), size of the bag, and currency exchange rate.
If you are looking for a travisher, here is another fantastic option: Allan Williams, a chairmaker and toolmaker who makes three kinds of travishers.
Recently I ordered two travishers from Allan, a standard one with a 4-1/2″-radius blade and a tighter-radius tool (3″) for fixing student mistakes and doing some work at the back edge of my seats.
Allan’s are based on the travishers made popular by Claire Minihan and Peter Galbert. Claire and Peter’s tool is the travisher I have used for more than a decade, and I have ridden it to Australia and back. I’m also fond of the travishers made (also on the Minihan/Galbert pattern) by Elia Bizzari and crew. All these travishers usually require quite a wait to get (though they are worth it.)
Now you have a third great option with Allan’s travishers. They are made to a very high standard. They arrive insanely sharp. And they work as well as any travisher I’ve ever used.
If you make regular-head stick chairs, the 4-1/2″-radius tool is all you need. If you want to explore some tight or shallow curves, Allan offers tools for that.
My only slight complaint is that the blades in Allan’s travishers are secured with Allen-head screws (makes sense when you think of it). I prefer slotted screws because I always have a #8 screwdriver on the bench. I will swap those screws out during my next trip to the hardware store. No big deal.
Otherwise, I recommend Allan’s tools with no reservation. They are fantastic tools that will last the rest of your chairmaking life.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I also recommend the travishers from James Mursell at Windsor Workshops, but those require a separate blog entry to explain fully….
This is a love story about Tim and Betsan Bowen, authors of “The Welsh Stick Chair: A Visual Record” and owners of Tim Bowen Antiques. Their courtship is, in part, how their business and marriage, both of 20 years, came to be (and also, their book!). But it’s also a story of the love they have for Welsh country furniture, folk art, textiles, cottages and history, items and places and periods and people, which they refuse to overlook, instead seeking out, sensitively caring for and passing along.
Discovering a Love for Antiques and Each Other
Tim and Betsan’s childhoods were quite different. Tim was brought up in West Wales in an English-speaking home that didn’t have many antiques but with a father who was interested in the past and tradition. Tim fished a lot as a child, and spent quite a lot of time on neighboring farms, helping friends with haymaking, milking and the like.
“I was the complete opposite,” says Betsan, who was brought up in the suburbs of London in a Welsh-speaking family. They had a few antiques but her grandfather, who lived in Wales, was a big collector.
“Although he didn’t collect the type of furniture and the type of things that we like now, he had a house that was jam-packed full of pottery and bits of furniture, and he was always off at auctions buying things,” Betsan says. “And so it was sort of somehow indoctrinated into me, this kind of Welsh culture and history that was really important. And so it carried on. I can’t stop now.”
As a teenager, Tim left school and found work as a decorator and painter, as well as doing farm work and building things. One day he received a phone call from Terry Thomas, an auctioneer, who needed help clearing out a house for an auction he was holding in town that Saturday. Tim agreed to the job.
“I turned up to basically just help load and the first thing somebody brought in was a chair that I just thought was rubbish because it was falling apart,” he says. “Every time I picked it up a leg would drop off and the arm was wobbling and then I remember carrying it and Mr. Thomas said to put a note on it that said, ‘handle with care.’ And I thought that was a bit of a joke because I was the new guy. And then it came up for sale and I remember it going for a £1,000, which I just couldn’t believe. I think was earning £25, £30 a week. And here was a pile of wood that just made a £1,000. That was the moment I thought, ‘There’s something going on here that I don’t really know much about.’”
Tim ended up working for Mr. Thomas for a few years. During that time Tim started buying books, reading articles, visiting museums and befriending many of the local antique dealers, picking their brains.
“It became the thing I wanted to do, I suppose, or be involved in,” he says. “I tried to learn about everything from silver to claret jugs to Art Deco but it was always Welsh furniture that interested me. But I gained a bit of knowledge about the antique world.”
Betsan also left school as a teenager and ended up working in the property business in London. By the time Betsan met Tim she was pretty high up in the organization, a large public limited company, and she was one of the few senior women who worked there.
“I was quite keen on buying things for my flat in London,” she says. “And I went down to Wales and went into the antique shop that Tim was working in and bought a chair from him, which was kind of vernacular, not a stick chair, but it was quite nice, an interesting thing with a drawer in the seat, which we still have in the house.”
This would have been in the late 1990s, when Tim was working as general manager at Country Antiques Kidwelly.
“And then I started going back and buying bits and pieces,” Betsan says. “And you know what it’s like – you buy a bigger apartment and then you buy a bigger house … one day he came up to deliver two or three pieces of furniture for me. And he was at the door at 7 o’clock in the morning, which I thought, ‘To come all this way from West Wales at 7 o’clock in the morning! I think this guy likes me!‘ Then Tim said he wanted to go to this British exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington. And so we went, he came to stay, and we went together and that was it! We’ve never looked back, have we?”
Their courtship began in 2000. Tim was immersed in the antiques world but Betsan says she was still immersed in the property business, although as time went on, she realized that she wasn’t enjoying it as much and she wanted to be with Tim. And they both recognized their shared passion for Welsh country furniture and art, something they had never shared so intimately with anyone else.
“We realized, when we got together, how many of the same books we owned,” Tim says. “Books on quilts, furniture and folk art.”
They both knew they wanted to have children – a family.
“And so we decided to get married and start the business,” Tim says.
They bought a house in West Wales together, and married in 2003.
“He gradually weaned me away from London,” Betsan says, laughing. “I’m joking, actually, because I wanted to leave London. I was actually quite happy to go.”
They both use the word “derelict” when describing their first house.
“It was what we were looking for,” Tim says. “We wanted something that hadn’t been too modernized, which happens to a lot of properties in West Wales. They just get updated. I think all our family thought we were a bit mad. They don’t quite get it. But it was a lovely house.”
The official start of their business, Tim Bowen Antiques, is the same date as their wedding anniversary – they celebrate the 20th anniversary of both this year.
“We went to an antique fair on our honeymoon,” Betsan says. “It wasn’t really much, but we enjoyed it.”
Early on, Tim spotted a skip on the street (akin to renting a dumpster in the U.S.) and took a look through it. In it, he found an old Art Deco rug and he asked the owner if he could have it. The owner said yes.
“It turned out to be quite a valuable rug,” Betsan says. “He sold it in Christie’s in London and made quite a bit of money.”
Soon after, the same thing happened again. Tim found an Art Nouveau cupboard literally in the trash, which he was able to sell, again, for quite a bit of money
“I thought, ‘Gosh this is fantastic!’” Betsan says. “We started the business with that money. Which wasn’t much, we started small, didn’t we?”
“We did, yeah,” Tim says.
“We’re still pretty small, really,” Betsan adds. “I don’t want to give you the idea that we’re big.”
“But we always wanted to sell the things that we liked,” Tim says. “I didn’t really like the Art Deco rug but I recognized it as something that we could make money on. But we almost always choose Welsh furniture, folk art, the vernacular country style of things.”
It’s simply what they both love, as indicated by their 18th-century bed and 19th-century kitchen table.
“We’re surrounded by very old things,” Betsan says.
Hiraeth
Looking through their online collection, it’s clear that Betsan and Tim have keen eyes.
“I think it evolves over lots of looking,” Tim says. “We spent a lot of time looking in galleries and museums and over time you learn to sort of be in tune with what you like.”
A similar effect occurs when Tim takes photos for their regularly emailed Stock Updates (you can sign up to receive it here).
“I take thousands of photos and I think some of them I don’t hate and every now and then I think, ‘That one works,’” he says. “You just end up knowing a lot of stuff by looking.”
Betsan jumps in at this point and tells Tim that she does believe he has an innate skill here though, especially with how Tim now plays with natural light.
Here, Tim recalls a conversation he recently had with a friend.
“Over the last 30 years I don’t think that a day has gone past when I haven’t thought about furniture,” Tim says. “It’s not something where you think, ‘Well, I won’t do that today,’ because it’s just who you are. Even when you get away on holiday we tend to visit old places, National Trust houses – the poor kids get dragged down to every museum.”
“We build whole holidays around the delivery of a piece of furniture or the picking up of a piece of furniture and all the museums that are near,” Betsan says. “But only the older children are sympathetic. Our youngest, in particular, near the end of the holiday is saying, ‘No museums! No old churches! No artifacts! And definitely, no antique shops!’” She laughs.
The Bowens have become good friends with many of their customers.
“You end up becoming quite friendly with them because you share similar interests,” Tim says. He talks about good friends in Suffolk, a six-hour journey from their home in Ferryside, a small village in Carmarthenshire, West Wales. They bought a cottage, took pictures and videos, and asked the Bowens to furnish it.
“That was a great project,” Tim says. “We’re often involved in projects where people buy an old house, move to Wales, restore an 18th-century, 19th-century house and then they want to furnish it with the appropriate things I suppose. But you become friends with people. It can take a long time to find everything, projects can take ages to do. But it’s great. You end up helping furnish some amazing houses.”
Betsan notes that she often hears Tim talking on the phone to clients from around the world, including Australia and the United States.
“I have quite a large number of Welsh people dotted around the world who want – there’s a Welsh term called hiraeth, which is longing for something,” Tim says. “They don’t live here, but they want a piece of Welsh furniture or a bit of Welsh folk art.”
“So many people, they long for this thing which is ethereal, I suppose, this hiraeth thing,” Betsan says. “It’s a longing for something that is home, really.”
‘It’s a Privilege’
The Bowens eventually moved to “another lovely house in the village,” they say, not far from their first house in Ferryside.
“It has a view of the estuary, and out to sea, so it’s a really magical place to be actually,” Betsan says. “And we never tire of it. Well, I never tire of it.”
“No, I never,” Tim says.
“Just looking out the windows, I’m talking to you, looking straight out to sea,” Betsan says. “And you see all the weather happen and the wind – it’s actually a grey day today, not particularly beautiful, but it kind of is though, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Tim says.
“Even when it’s grey,” Betsan says.
From their home they also have a view of Llansteffan Castle, built in the 12th century and located across the Tywi Estuary.
When asked about a typical day they laugh as most parents of three children do and say their entire lives are dominated by their kids, ages 16, 13 and 12. They have a gallery, also located in Ferryside, but almost all of their sales are done online, and Tim and Betsan work from home.
“It’s an online business, really,” Tim says. “So it’s quite a sensible working day.”
It’s a model that allows both of them to be available to get their kids off to school on the bus, pick them up after school and manage after-school activities. Any given day might involve updating things on the website, delivering furniture, visiting with a client or picking things up from a restorer.
“So I wouldn’t say there is a typical day, which is part of what we like,” Tim says.
“We’re sitting now at the kitchen table,” Betsan says. “And the kitchen table is where we work. We’ve tried having offices but it just didn’t work. We always gravitate back to the kitchen table.”
“And the tea,” Tim says.
“The kettle, yeah,” Betsan says. “And it’s nice and warm in here. We put a stove in here.”
Betsan’s day is also not complete without walking her dogs, Selsig and Sglodion, Welsh for Sausage and Chips.
“We’ve got two dachshunds, and they’re very naughty,” she says. “They’re at my feet right now.”
Betsan and Tim keep busy with other projects as well, and their book, “The Welsh Stick Chair – A Visual Record,” which they published in 2020, is a good example. During the coronavirus pandemic lockdown, they took on a new project.
“We bought a quite rare, tiny Welsh, Grade II cottage,” Tim says. “It has to be sensitively conserved, so we spend time when we can up at the cottage.”
Tim has already been taking pieces up to the cottage and photographing them, which has worked out quite wonderfully, he says, and it’s been exciting to see how they look in an original setting. In addition to serving as a photo studio, the plan is to rent out the cottage for holidays.
“But it will be quite a particular person who is prepared to stay there because in the cottage itself, there is no running water and no loo,” Betsan says.
A kitchen and bathroom will exist in a building they’ve built alongside the cottage.
“They’re so rare, these cottages,” Tim says. “They’re basically made of mud walls, two tiny rooms downstairs and a loft. They were dotted around Wales but they just didn’t survive. Once they deteriorate, they can disappear very quickly.”
“It was a heart rules the head kind of moment,” Betsan says. “But we don’t regret it for one minute.”
“Oh no, it was an amazing thing to do,” Tim says.
“It is,” Betsan says.
“It’s a privilege to look after it.” Tim says.
Championing Humble Furniture
Tim talks about a recent chair they bought which had been stored in the loft of a barn in a farm.
“It had such a hard life,” he says. “It’s missing components, it’s been broken, but it’s just the most amazing thing.”
“Hang on, you haven’t said the most important part,” Betsan says. “That it’s got at least one, if not 10, layers of thick gray paint all over it. You know, not nice paint, it is, isn’t it?”
“It’s tractor paint,” Tim says.
“And you can see it’s exactly that color,” Betsan says. “It used to be on a Massey Ferguson.”
“I think a lot of people would think it’s not worth saving but it’s such an amazing thing,” Tim says. “We’re still pondering what to do. You have to be so sensitive to the restoration, conservation of these things. We’re giving this some thought to see how far we go with it or do we just try to stabilize it and leave it as an object as it is now, which I think is what we’re trying to do. It might stay with us forever.”
“You can read that as he wants it to stay here forever,” Betsan says, laughing. “I am just thinking of another chair that we bought, which had a beautiful seat. The seat was about 4” or 5” thick, one piece of wood, but at some point it had obviously been used for somebody who was an invalid and they cut a hole in it, in the seat. And so it was used as a commode. And I mean, I don’t know what it would have been worth if it hadn’t had this hole cut into it. But actually, we sold it, didn’t we?”
“It’s in our book,” Tim says. “It’s probably one of the most remarkable chairs, really. But when we bought it, it was in such a neglected state. But the idea is being sensitive to it, really, not trying to get it as good as new.”
“Yeah, not trying to hide what happened to it,” Betsan says. “This is what happened to it – you either love it or you don’t love it. What we’re saying is that we love the chairs the way they are.”
“I think we’re always mindful of the things that we pick,” Tim says. “They aren’t fine works of art or antiques. They are very humble, everyday things. It’s always good to remember that they had a life. They’ve been used and sometimes been neglected and put out in the shed because they’re no longer needed. I think that’s in part what we like about them. They’re not perfect in a sense. So we won’t go looking for pristine-looking antiques.”
Tim and Betsan say they always buy things that they really love. But that can come with its own difficulties.
“There is always a little bit of regret when something you’ve never seen before goes,” Tim says. “But you learn to know that a phone call or an email or something will come up where you will say, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to get that, that’s fantastic!’ It’s full of surprises, the antiques. You have to let them go, I suppose, sometimes. Of course, there are a lot in this house.”
“I’m glad you said that,” Betsan says. “That’s quite an epiphany. He usually says things like, ‘Oh, you can never have enough! Actually, I’m just joking because we really are as bad as each other. There’ll be something where I’ll say, ‘You can’t sell that!’”
“I think in the antique business, you’re only really as good as what you can sell,” Tim says. “You try to find good things and offer good things and so you build a reputation on having good, original things and if you keep everything, well, that’s not going to be the case. How are you going to put food on the table?”
Betsan and Tim regularly seek out what they call “the humbler pieces of furniture,” the things that were used by everyday people and built by everyday people.
“They weren’t works of art in prestigious buildings,” Tim says. “I think sometimes, perhaps, these things have been overlooked in the world of antiques. Often they get sorted as primitive or basic and it’s mostly when people compare a primitive or simple stick chair to a fine Chippendale chair. They’re quite different things but they were also made totally differently by totally different people. I think we champion it a bit more.”
Tim says it’s the same for the little cottage he and Betsan bought.
“It’s very important,” he says. “There are the big houses in West Wales that the National Trust will love over and conserve but sometimes the cottages, they are here one moment and gone the next or they’ve been modernized and there’s no trace of them. So I think I’m right in saying it that way, that that’s what interests us. The things that are made by — not ‘honest’ people because we don’t really know a lot about them — but just the people who lived and worked in West Wales in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. We try to champion that, I think.”
Betsan says they’re working on their next book, but progress has been slow, in part because they can’t agree on the title.
“It’s a term for folk art, and it’s a modern term, really, for things that have been made as art but they might be made for a particular purpose,” she says. “Can you call a turned wooden bowl a piece of art? I mean, you do, because we think of it as art, don’t we? Because it’s such a beautiful object. But it wasn’t made for that. It was made to be used.”
“For people, the term ‘folk art’ conjures up a style or an image or a way of art,” Tim says. “It’s a tricky one, that.”
“But it’s really more to do with the fact that we’ve got three children and it’s really busy!” Betsan says, laughing. “We do have a number of books that we’re thinking about.”
“The stick chair one took us a bit by surprise, how many people wanted to know about stick chairs,” Tim says. “It’s a lovely thing to do, to have for people who don’t know about these things. It’s good for business – we’ve got a good archive of photographs. But I think it’s always that way with business. You have to keep thinking, ‘How do you keep it going?’”
“Yeah,” Betsan says.
“Not just rest on your laurels and do what you’ve always done, I suppose,” Tim says.
I can’t imagine the Bowens ever doing that at all.
Multiple sources are reporting the sad news that Garry Knox Bennett, a giant in the furniture making world, has died. He was born in 1934 in Alameda, Calif. The following is excerpted from “The Difference Makers,” by Marc Adams (2019).
Garry Knox Bennett is an American icon in the field of woodworking. He studied painting and sculpture at the California College of Arts and Crafts and is a self-taught furniture maker living in Oakland, Calif. His trademark is the combined use of fine metalwork and woodworking. Garry’s work is in private collections as well as the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Mint Museum in Charlotte, N.C.; the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City (formerly the American Craft Museum); the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; the Oakland Museum of California; the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and more.
A major retrospective of Garry’s work was initiated at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City (formerly the American Craft Museum) in January 2001, which included a showing at the Oakland Museum of California. The exhibition was documented with an extensive book on his work: “Made in Oakland: The Furniture of Garry Knox Bennett.” Garry has taught and lectured extensively in the U.S. as well as in Canada, Australia and the U.K. In 2004, he received the Award of Distinction from The Furniture Society and was honored as Fellow of the American Craft Council. In 2011, Garry received the James Renwick Alliance Master of the Medium award in Washington, D.C.
On the Professional Side After leaving the California College of Arts and Craft in 1960 to pursue painting and welded-steel sculpture, Garry found work in the Bay Area making sculptural light fixtures for homes and commercial buildings. Work was sporadic, however, and commissions from his paintings, sculptures and art shows were not enough to ensure a consistent income for his growing family. Garry searched for an avenue that would allow for a base income to enable him to focus on his art.
Garry and his lovely wife, Sylvia, had an opportunity to build a home and live in a rural setting on land owned by Garry’s ex-stepfather, a rice farmer in Lincoln, Calif. The plan was for this “rural living” to afford a modest livelihood as part-time property caretakers and part-time artist. On the outside it seemed an ideal way for Garry to grow in his work, but the reality was otherwise and they returned to the Bay Area after five years.
Still looking for that “thing” that would generate basic support, Garry discovered the next opportunity through friends who had a shop in Berkeley, Calif. They approached Garry about making some jewelry, primarily earrings. It was the 1960s and the beginning of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury “hippy” days – anything large and dangly with beads was hot! During this time, Garry designed and produced peace symbols, roach clips and assorted “hippy” accoutrements. His company, “Squirkenworks,” was started in 1965. Garry viewed himself as a commercial sculptor and artist who sold to both a wide counterculture market and an upscale clientele.
His choice of material was brass brazing-rod, which he had used in his sculpture. It was cheap and readily available. The work was a huge success and evolved into a major line of precious-metal jewelry, which was sold in stores across the U.S. Henri Bendel in New York City was a customer. The result was a stable income for many years, allowing Garry to retreat and focus on his personal work.When Richard Nixon outlawed drug paraphernalia in 1974, Squirkenworks ceased manufacturing, and the “Summer of Love” segued into the “Death of the Hippy.” An era was over. Garry, however, chose to expand the plating shop that he had set up for his production work and offer precious-metal plating to other manufacturers. The shop is still operating as Gold Seal Plating today.
Garry’s move to functional work was possibly initiated by his early light fixtures. One of his commissions was a fixture that started at a front door entry and traversed the entire home, following the ceiling through the living room and ending in the dining room – illuminating one of Garry’s paintings that the client owned. Initially he worked exclusively with metal, which included a series of metal clocks. His first series of functional work, Cloud Clocks (all metal), was exhibited at Gump’s, then a world-renowned fine and decorative arts gallery in San Francisco.
He gradually moved toward some very primitive wooden casework. At first his only woodworking equipment was an old table saw that he used when he built his first house on his ex-stepfather’s farm. Garry found cabinets intriguing and started making some simple and, according to Garry, “very crude by woodworking standards” cabinets with drawers that often incorporated elaborate light fixtures attached to the casework.
An old friend who had a gallery in San Francisco was about to open a new gallery for furniture and glass and asked whether Garry would be interested in exhibiting in a group furniture show. Although Garry didn’t consider himself a furniture maker, he was interested in being included. So he turned to a group of like-minded young furniture makers in his area to see what kind of work was being produced. Although the majority of work at the time was impressive, he noticed there seemed to be far more attention paid to intricate dovetails while overlooking some pretty basic design concepts. Most work lacked visual excitement, shape and color. The door was open for a California-style furniture earthquake.
Noticing the extreme focus on joinery, fine wood and lots of dovetails by many of these makers, Garry decided to make a piece of furniture for this new gallery exhibition that was visually exciting. Garry said, “there is much more to making an interesting piece of furniture than just fancy wood and joinery.” He intentionally set out to show that an untrained person could execute reasonable joinery and make a special piece that can become more than the sum of its joints. His now-famous “Nail Cabinet” was born.
This piece was a reaction to the decree that “the wood is paramount.” For Garry, wood was one vehicle to an exciting visual outcome. Design, function and excitement were far more important to him than the fact that an exotic material was used. The “Nail Cabinet” was conceived as a statement. And, to be honest, Garry grossly underestimated the reaction in downtown San Francisco that it would generate. Many perceived it as an abomination and sacrilegious (to put it mildly). With the criticism came unexpected attention. The labels of renegade/Philistine etc., opened a door that Garry was ready to enter. From that point, Garry put painting and sculpture on the back burner and it was furniture full-speed ahead.
This little bit of notoriety enabled Garry to comfortably explore a divergent approach which he found to be exciting. After the “Nail Cabinet,” the public would not be shocked by what would follow. Coming from an art background, his base was composition, balance, design and visual excitement, all of which were missing from most of the furniture at the time. Garry moved beyond the “California roundover” (referencing the soft edges given to most of the work being done in the late 1970s on the west coast). He was able to produce quality work without the sophisticated skill and training of the east coast approach to furniture making.
His life is unique in that his choices have been made by just following a thread that has allowed him to do exactly what he wants to do in his own fashion, which is not an easy task. Garry underplays the business of art, but it exists. It is the conscious act of embracing anything that will enable you to do what you wish in the manner you choose. He lives by a simple rule: Set up a challenge and then go for it; success or failure, the effort serves to expand one’s abilities.
On the Personal Side I first contacted Garry about teaching at MASW in the late 1990s, but it wasn’t until the summer of 2005 that the dream became a reality. Garry agreed to do a workshop where students, along with Garry, would make a table that would be auctioned with proceeds split 50-50 between The Furniture Society and the Roger Cliffe Memorial Foundation. Made from walnut, the table featured a breadboard top with massive through-mortise-and-tenon joinery, which is typical of the GKB style. When completed, Garry and each student signed the underneath of the tabletop. The table sold for more than $10,000….
Garry likes to enjoy life to the fullest. He is witty, artful, funny, clever and maybe every now and then a little sinful. Seth Stem, professor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), once told me that he invited Garry to be a guest lecturer at RISD. Somehow the story goes that Garry’s flight arrived very late and by the time he got to Seth’s house it was the middle of the night. Pounding on Seth’s door, Garry yelled, “Where’s the beer?” I’m not quite sure if that story is true (it might have been something harder than beer), but Seth warned me that having Garry teach at MASW might be an experience. Seth knows that I’m a straight shooter. I don’t drink, smoke, cuss, gamble, use drugs or any of that “sinful” stuff, and when Seth heard I had invited Garry to teach at MASW, he thought he better give me a heads-up.
Although I had talked to Garry often, I never will forget the phone conversation we had before his first trip to MASW. The concern in his voice bordered somewhere between terrified and repentant. “Marc, before I come to Indiana I have just one question. Now Indiana, isn’t that one of those Bible Belt States?” He promised me that he would be on his best behavior. As it turns out, Garry was a true gentleman and was one of the most gracious, polite and wonderful instructors I have ever had. At the end of his first workshop I will never forget saying goodbye in my driveway. He took me to the side and told me what it meant to him to be a part of our program, then gave me a big brotherly hug and drove away – straight to the bar.
People come to furniture making via many different paths, but Leslie Webb is the first furniture maker I know who got into the field through a gig as a nanny.
“I had gone off to college [at Bowdoin in Brunswick, Maine] and was completely lost in terms of direction,” she began, by way of explanation. “I found everything at college interesting. But when I thought about ‘do you want to do this for the rest of your life,’ it wasn’t THAT interesting.” She worried she might not have any direction at all.
So Leslie decided to take a break. Everyone she knew thought she was throwing her life away, and she remembers how scary it was to make her way forward against that disapproval.
It was around 2000, and she had to get a job to support herself. “I was looking through the newspaper at help wanted ads. I saw this ad; it said ‘childcare in exchange for an apartment.’” It was a start; at least she’d have a roof over her head, even if the job didn’t come with income. She wrote a letter of introduction, explaining that she’d babysat in high school, even if she understood that didn’t amount to much experience. It turned out that Julie, the mother, had family members from Texas, Leslie’s home state; she was born in Georgetown in 1978. Leslie thinks this seemingly tenuous connection may have been helpful. They hit it off at the interview, especially after realizing that Julie’s grandmother was at a nursing home in a small town called McGregor; Leslie’s mother was working with elderly patients as a physical therapist, and as it happened, she knew Julie’s grandmother. “It was such a weird thing!”
After a series of interviews Leslie got the job. She got along well with the family, who treated her well. She still keeps in touch with the boy she was caring for, who is now a young adult.
One day Leslie spotted a Moser catalog on the kitchen counter with a pile of mail. “At breakfast I was randomly flipping through and thought, ‘Oh, it would be so cool to build furniture, because it’s beautiful, but it’s useful too.’” Robert, the father of her charge, told her he knew basic carpentry and would be happy to teach her.
Robert was a fine arts painter who did massive paintings – 8’ long x 4’ high – for which he made his own frames and shipping crates. So she started helping him build crates in his Brunswick studio.
“I was cutting a 2×4 for a crate,” Leslie recalls. “I remember using a chop saw and seeing the blade sinking into the wood and I knew ‘this is it.’”
She worked as the family’s nanny for about three years. In her spare time, she tried to build some pieces of furniture but got stuck because she knew the quality she wanted to produce but didn’t know how to get there. There were no woodworkers in her family to ask for advice. YouTube videos were not yet a thing; the only resource she knew about was Fine Woodworking, which she read but found largely over her head.
Leslie concluded she was going to have to train through a program. She’d been in Maine long enough to know about the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, so she checked out its website and found the nine-month program was soon launching. The deadline was just around the corner, so she submitted an application and was delighted to learn she’d been accepted. Her mom was worried about Leslie’s ability to support herself as a furniture maker. Her dad, a doctor, was “not supportive at all.” As the youngest of her parents’ four children, she thinks she was his last hope for one of them to go to medical school.
“I so enjoyed the entire process,” she says of her training at CFC. “I really enjoyed being able to design my own pieces. The first two projects are teacher-designed, to build hand and machine skills, respectively. The rest you design yourself, up to a point. I enjoyed the process of having an idea and figuring out whether it would work or not. And I still do enjoy that process, so much.”
For joinery, she focuses on traditional mortises and tenons, dovetails and miters with reinforcement. “Nothing too out of the box. I gravitate aesthetically toward contemporary stuff – pretty stripped-back designs that don’t have a ton of adornment. Sometimes integral tenons, sometimes floating.” She usually makes her own floating tenons. “I don’t always let the tool dictate. Sometimes I modify what the tool can do so it’s not dictating.”
Today Leslie works in a small shop, a converted two-car garage in Georgetown, Texas, where she returned to live around 2011. Some of her work is commissioned, some done in small batches and some on spec. Outside of Instagram, I first became aware of Leslie’s work when I saw a few pieces on exhibit at the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville, N.C. They were flawless – beautifully made and elegantly designed. She is also one of the women and woman-identifying makers whose work was juried into the Making a Seat at the Table exhibition in Philadelphia from October 2019 through January 2020. She has done lots of shows over the years, among them the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, Architectural Digest Home Design Show, International Contemporary Furniture Fair/ICFF, and Wanted Design.
Heartwood Tools
Furniture making is an economically precarious field, especially for those whose livelihood depends on their own income alone, without help from a partner. By the time she moved home to Texas, Leslie had already weathered the Great Recession. “I went through the crash in 2008 with my furniture business and it was awful,” she says. So she’d been thinking vaguely about how she might add another income-producing dimension to her work. “One day the idea popped into my head: I wonder whether I could sell HNT Gordon tools over here.” There was no retail outlet in the States; the company is based in Australia. “I realized it would be a whole other thing,” but she reminded herself that furniture making has its own stresses. The idea stayed in the back of her head; it wouldn’t go away.
Over the years she’d bought some HNT Gordon tools for her own use. After pondering for two or three years, she decided to start with those. As part of her research she gauged interest among her woodworking friends. “People were hesitant [to buy HNT Gordon tools] because [the company] was overseas.” Some told her that the ordering process was unclear to them; others worried that there might be hidden fees for international orders and so on. Finally, she contacted the company to inquire. Terry, the head of the business, was on board. So she decided to try.
In late 2019 Leslie started Heartwood Tools, which specializes in high-quality woodworking tools. “It’s going really well!” she says. In fact, “it has temporarily taken over. If I had known that the pandemic was coming when I launched it, I probably would not have done it. But it has exploded – I think in large part people are spending more time at home and doing more furniture making.”
Do You Deserve a Good Caning?
Caning – for stools, chair seats and small tables – is another corner of the furniture-making world in which Leslie is making her mark. Over the years she has used pre-made sheets for caned work, but then she learned how to do it herself. “I’ve always liked caning,” she says. “We had dining chairs with caned seats when I was little. I remember being fascinated that they could hold people, child or adult. It didn’t seem like that should be possible.” She likes being able to introduce color into her work but hates to dye or stain wood. Caning (seat weaving?) offered a way to combine natural wood with eye-popping colors. “I don’t dye the caning. I have experimented with that, but was not happy with the results. That led me to look elsewhere for color, which led to cotton rope and paracord as weaving materials.”
She taught herself how to weave. “Once you know how to do Danish cord, it’s not that intimidating.” She’d taught herself to use Danish cord using “The Caner’s Handbook”. A couple of people on Instagram also let her “pick their brains.”
Why Furniture Making?
“I have spent an inordinate amount of time contemplating ‘why furniture making?’, says Leslie, “mostly because it still seems like such an ‘out of left field’ passion when I look at my life. I have never encountered another subject which so thoroughly engages all parts of my brain, creative and analytical. Dreaming up new designs while also agonizing over 32nds [of an inch] and adding fractions in my head? Sign me up. Time in the shop also forces me to be completely present in the moment. Drifting off in thought for even a brief moment can result in ruining a piece or worse, a shop accident. Grabbing a hand tool or turning on a machine is the fastest way to leave my worries behind. I think the thing that keeps me coming back for more, though, is the continual chase for improvement – and not compared to others, but to what I have accomplished previously,” she says. “Even after 20 years, I don’t feel like I have mastered anything, and I kind of like that. There is always a new specialized niche skill to learn or a mistake to be fixed. It is a humbling pursuit; there is nothing like messing up a process I’ve done hundreds of time to keep my feet planted firmly on the ground. I could come up with a multi-page list of why I love woodworking, but the truth is I am not sure how much logic controls the things we love; we simply do.”