The sign over Chester Cornett’s shop in Elizabethtown, Ohio.
Every shop I’ve worked in had a set of built-in aphorisms – things that are said when you encounter a moment of truth at the bench or when the clamps come off. Michael Dunbar’s chair shop probably had more than 100 sayings that he and his instructors had developed. Taking a class there was like living inside Confucius’s “Analects.”
We have some at our shop. Some of these are said out loud. Some are muttered under one’s breath. Others are too private to speak.
“Let us all now drink to the success of our hopeless endeavor.”
This is a Russian dissident toast that I learned in college. I say it to myself as a little prayer any time I begin a challenging project, which is just about every time I begin a project.
“For those people and that money.”
I’ve heard this one a lot in workshops. It’s said when you botch a job and decide not to fix it. I’ve turned it on its head and say it when something goes really right, or when a piece turns out as expected. It is said as a reminder as to who is the customer.
“If you have to ask the question, then you know the answer.”
I’ve published this one before. We say it whenever someone asks “Should I fix this?” “Does this assembly need to be remade?”
“You have to build a shed-load of furniture.”
I picked this one up from David Savage (rest in peace). I say it to students whenever they despair that they’ll never improve.
“Furniture makers have been hiding mistakes from rich people for thousands of years.”
I first heard this one from furniture maker Jim Stuard. He said it whenever he made a flawless repair to a piece.
“By all means read what the experts have to say. Just don’t let it get in the way of your woodworking.”
This is a John Brown quote. And I love it. I say it whenever we do something that goes against prevailing internet/magazine/book wisdom.
“La carrière ouverte aux talents.” (The tools to him that can handle them.)
This quote, attributed to Napoleon, I never say out loud. I say it to myself on the rare occasion when I get something exactly right – a joint, a tool setup, etc.
“The things I make may be for others, but how I make them is for me.”
A quote from Tony Konovaloff, I say this when I do things the hard way instead of the easy way on a project. Or I do something that the customer will never notice.
“Sharp fixes everything.”
I say this to students when their tools are dull and they are struggling.
“Don’t make a clock out of it.”
A German workshop expression shared with me by Peter Lanz. We say this whenever someone is making something far more complicated than it should be. And for no good reason.
Chester Cornett splitting out a log for a chair in Appalshop’s film “Hand Carved.”
Eastern Kentucky is the most beautiful part of the state – and the most poor. Ravaged first by the lumber industry and then coal mining, the land and its people are surprisingly resilient. When visitors come to Kentucky and want to understand the state, I drive them east into the mountains.
It’s also an area rich with a cultural heritage in art, music and furniture making. And for the last 50 years, Appalshop has been recording all aspects of the culture with fascinating short films.
During the pandemic, Appalshop has made all of its videos on its streaming platform free to rent. This is a remarkable chance to browse and watch the organization’s films from the 1970s to the present day.
You can see all the videos available here. To rent them for free, click the “apply promo code” link at checkout and enter: watchparty.
Of special interest to woodworkers: Watch “Hand Carved,” the fantastic film about chairmaker Chester Cornett. Also, check out “Chairmaker,” a film about Dewey Thompson and his rocking chairs. There are also films about quilting, bluegrass, coal mining, hip hop in the mountains, and civil rights.
If you find films you like, they are inexpensive to purchase, usually about $5. And it helps support a great organization.
Two 40-year-old settin’ chairs spruced up with white paint.
I first reached out to an Appalachian chairmaker in about November 2019. It was before this project came about, before the search started in earnest to find chairmakers in the region. Our initial phone conversation discussed the details about an upcoming two-day visit. I struggled to keep up; the chairmaker’s fast talk and dialect were tough to follow over the phone, especially because he did not get strong service in the mountains and our call dropped a few times. My hope for the visit was to observe, listen, learn and, if at all possible, lend a hand. He outlined a schedule and made a few suggestions for our time.
I asked about local lodging, a place to stay after we worked together. He lives in Eastern Kentucky, which is rural, mountainous and remote. He offered me his guest bedroom, a trusting and generous gesture. The next part of the conversation was memorable, despite the poor connection. I reluctantly accepted his offer to stay, saying I’d be happy to find a local hotel so as not to impose.
He replied, “If things go poorly, I’ll just feed you to the pigs….” *
No follow-up. No laughter. I hoped it was due to the poor connection. My wife made sure I left the chairmaker’s address before leaving for the visit, something to assist the authorities, just in case things did not go well.
*I scanned for barns or signs of livestock upon arriving at his property. None. All clear.
Kentuckian Terry Ratliff, resting after opening a walnut log.
Chris Schwarz asked me to share a little about my upcoming book, “Backwoods Chairs.” The original details of how the idea came together are a little fuzzy, though it had to do with our mutual appreciation for the Appalachian chairmaking traditions. The chairs were the spark that ignited this project.
In “Backwoods Chairs,” I search for post-and-rung chairmakers still working within central Appalachian traditions due to their historic ties to the region (the chairs also go by the name ladderback, hickory-bottom, common and slat-back). But that search proved challenging. Though there’s a rich tradition, the current field of chairmakers is small and dwindling. The makers have little Internet presence, and there is no central information source, such as a person who knows the makers and their locations. I’ve chased dozens of leads and recall laughter on the other end of the phone line as I ask about traditional chairmakers. “Good luck,” they giggle.
Are there makers still out there? Even the chairmakers ask me that question upon hearing about this book project.
There is an abundance of green woodworking in “Backwoods Chairs,” though it’s not all that. Some makers turn their parts from planks, others split and shave. You will find plenty of handwork and hickory bark, a little history and humor within the pages. There are stories about the makers, pictures of their shops and tools, and emphasis on their techniques and their chairs, along with discussion of their successes and hardships. And plenty of chairmaking romance with a dash of capitalism’s ruthlessness. The book’s final section is a step-by-step build of a couple chairs, created for someone with a home shop and lack of backyard access to a deciduous forest full of oaks and maples.
Appalashop, Chester Cornett’s final chair, 1978
There is another thing that draws me to this project beyond my love of the chairs. It is an attitude that is incredibly tough to capture: that these chairs are somehow (and mistakenly) the bottom rung of creative woodworking. That they are almost worth looking beyond, to find something more impressive. The Ronald L. Hurst article “Southern Furniture Studies: Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going,” for the MESDA Journal, catches some of that vibe (emphasis mine):
Southern furniture is one of the most dynamic subjects in American decorative arts research today. Institutions and private scholars alike are actively investigating a wide array of the region’s cabinetmaking traditions, and their compelling discoveries are regularly revealed in new publications and exhibitions. Yet interest in the topic is comparatively recent. Antiquarians began collecting furniture from the North as early as the 1820s, but there was almost no awareness of its southern counterparts before the 1930s. Even then, study of the material would remain sporadic for another thirty years. Although a small core of early-twentieth-century southern dealers and collectors was aware of the South’s cabinetmaking heritage, the rest of the American decorative arts community was convinced that southern furniture makers fashioned nothing more complex than ladder-back chairs and utility tables.
The following paragraph, from the same article, continues on this theme of regional furniture ignorance:
Ironically, one of the principal catalysts for a widespread change in attitudes about southern furniture came at the 1949 Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum. Joseph Downs, curator of the MMA’s American Wing, addressed that first Forum audience in a lecture titled “Regional Characteristics of American Furniture.” During the question-and-answer session that followed, a participant asked Downs why his presentation on American regional style had included only goods made in the North. Downs reportedly replied that “little of artistic merit was made south of Baltimore.” Either Juliette Brewer or Eleanor Offutt, both knowledgeable Kentucky collectors and preservationists, purportedly offered a follow-up question. “Mr. Downs,” one of them asked, “do you speak out of ignorance or out of prejudice?” Downs graciously pled ignorance, but his then widely accepted view on the subject, stated in that place to that audience, generated outrage and launched a movement that remains alive today.
The MESDA article is in reference to collecting and recognizing the value in Southern furniture. It’s my understanding that high-style Southern furniture is now receiving its due. So some things are changing.
Sherman Wooten Rocker
There are significant differences between high-style work and the backwoods chairs. In one, creativity is born out of abundance. The conditions foster beautiful work, yet I am fascinated by creativity out of necessity. Making not in partnership with affluence, but within communities of modest means. Within central Appalachia, the tradition of making out of necessity points directly toward slat-back chairs and their makers. Or at least it did. I’m interested in hearing from the makers about today’s conditions and if they are optimistic about traditional chairmaking continuing forward with future generations.
West Virginian Tom Lynch, gang-cutting slats at the band saw.
This project is possible only because the makers generously opened their workshops and shared their stories. They graciously adjusted along with me throughout the uncertainty of the last year. I planned the first visits for this project for spring of 2020 (you remember last spring). Travel was quickly postponed until conditions improved. A couple visits happened last fall, on good weather days when we could distance and be outdoors, with makers in Eastern Kentucky, North Carolina and West Virginia. Upcoming travel includes trips into Tennessee, North Carolina (again) and Virginia. At that point I should have plenty of material for the book.
I have high hopes for “Backwoods Chairs.” I want to do right by the chairmakers, write an engaging and informative book for the woodworking community, and create something worthy of Lost Art Press. Since starting I have added one more aspiration to my list: I intend to stay clear of any hungry pigs.
It’s no secret that Brendan Gaffney and I are obsessed with the life and work of Chester Cornett, a traditional Eastern Kentucky chairmaker who pushed into the world of art with his later chairs he built mostly in Cincinnati.
While Brendan and I have been studying his chairs for some time, we both have developed an odd affection for the hand-painted sign Chester had outside his workshop. The sign is made of bits of thin sheet metal that have been screwed or riveted together. The letters are orange (Brendan found a color photo that has the sign in the background).
If you don’t speak Kentucky, here’s what the sign says:
Handmade Furniture
Maker Of The
Cornett Chairs
We Make Anything
Or It Can’t Be Made
I love the misspellings. “Funiture?” “Chaires?” “Iney Thin?”
Brendan and I have been plotting to make a sign like this for our shop. Today we made a prototype using hardboard, grey primer and orange paint from the home center. After studying photos of the sign, I decided the letters were 5” high and determined the width and height of the sign based on that.
We bought an inexpensive stencil set and stencil brushes from the home center. Then we went to work. The entire project took about an hour.
We’ll hang this sign in storefront’s library. And now I’m going to find some used sheet metal so we can make the real thing. The metal sign will hang in the garden where it will age with the help of the elements.
The “Mayor’s Chair” in the archives of the University of Kentucky’s Museum of Art.
I’ve just finished my article for Mortise & Tenon Magazine about Chester Cornett’s “Masterpiece Bookcase Rocker.” I believe Cornett called his bookcase rocker a masterpiece for its expert joinery, its level of adornment and care of construction – but over his eccentric career there were more than a few momentous chairs, each of which distilled or showcased a particular set of skills. In the bookcase rocker, it was his use of traditional joinery and form to accomplish an outlandish and beautiful chair (and you can read more about it in the upcoming Issue 5 of Mortise & Tenon). But for one of his other momentous pieces, the “Mayor’s Chair” (actually made to be presented to President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated before that could be effected), Cornett showed his incredible talent with an entirely different discipline – hickory bark weaving.
The Mayor’s Chair is a feat of handcraft, with walnut posts and rockers, and hickory rungs. But beyond its base construction, every flat surface, from the lids of the baskets used as armrests to the panels below the seat and the seat itself, is woven in narrow hickory bark Cornett harvested himself from the hills of Perry County, Ky. And, where most weavers have the luxury of hiding splices and material defects on the bottom of the panel, most of these panels are visible from both sides, and thus have nowhere to hide imperfections. With a technical skill I hadn’t known Cornett to have (or hadn’t looked for), he wove each panel without defect, with all surfaces that are visible showing minimal splices and few (if any) defects or errors.
Beyond the beautiful execution of the standard herringbone pattern, Cornett displays a few other astonishing skills on the chair. For one, the octagonal seat is woven with the same pattern – a pattern not particularly suited to anything but four-sided panels. He solved this issue with a complex method of weaving over the proud corners of the bark, leaving a uniform, pointed edge that allowed him to adhere to the rectilinear pattern.
A near invisible splice, one of only a few visible on the chair.
It is also worth noting his ability as a technician. After looking at the chair for a few minutes, I realized I hadn’t noticed a single splice (typically on a hickory bark seat, splices are a noticeable but inoffensive reality). Instead, the splices are near invisible, so expertly are they done, and even then, few and far between. For one, this is impressive from a raw material standpoint – the strips Cornett harvested must have been first-rate, long and free of defects that didn’t necessitate the use of a large number of splices of shorter lengths. Second, the straightforward talent that it took to simply execute these fine splices, using only a buck knife (as he was known to do) is impressive.
Were the chair just an expert exercise of weaving, it would impress me. Maybe even more exciting than this display of technical skill, however, is its unforced incorporation into the form of the piece. The bark’s coloration and patterning beautifully complement the simple walnut posts. The usual outrageous adornment often found in Cornett’s large rockers, such as 6″ gothic finials and oversize carved pegs, are understated in this chair. This shows an understanding of understated design in a chairmaker to whom most assign the dismissive term of “folk artist.” In using simple pegs and a squatter, simpler finial, Cornett does nothing to overpower the design, showing his self-awareness and ability not only as a technician but as a designer and craftsperson intimate with his medium and its presentation.
In this chair, Cornett once again defied my expectations and preconceived ideas about what he was capable of. I expected to see a beautiful chair, yes, but like so many others, I had imagined the woven panels would be an over-the-top adornment by a chairmaker obsessed with pushing outrageous designs. What I found was an expertly executed chair, in both joinery, shaping and weaving, that is charming and inviting, not outrageous or overzealous. The more I spend time with Cornett’s chairs (there are two more on my shortlist to visit soon), the more I realize just how sincere his forms and abilities were. He was an eccentric character, for sure – but his chairs are nothing if not sound designs and solid constructions that grow from his eccentricity while solidly reflecting his immersion in a traditional craft handed down by skilled hands.
P.S. Thank you to Janie Welker at the University of Kentucky Art Museum for her time and patience in letting me come to view, photograph and drool over (not on!) the chair. I have found the custodians of Cornett’s work around Kentucky and the Midwest to be terrifically welcoming to this shaggy young furniture maker, and the UK Art Museum is no exception. Thanks Janie!
