Search Results for: roorkee

Silkroad traveler Suzanne Ellison spent some time on the Dark Web yesterday, digging up images of famous people sitting in Roorkee chairs. Even I was surprised at what she found.

— Christopher Schwarz

I’m interested in how furniture (and tool) designs change. Typically the trajectory is toward entropy or dissolution. But sometimes it goes the other way (see Lie-Nielsen and Veritas handplanes.)

This week I have been deep into reading the Kaare Klint monograph by Gorm Harkaer. It is a staggering work in both scale and scope. Harkaer covers everything from Klint’s paintings to his sculpture, logo designs and (of course) furniture. It’s the second-most expensive book I own, but I don’t regret a penny.

Today I was examining some of the photos of Klint’s Safari chair, which was born from the Roorkee chair of the campaign-furniture era. The above photo is one of the earliest chairs from 1933.

The legs are teak. And note the folded over and stitched leather arms. Oh and I couldn’t resist noting that the screws are clocked.

Later chairs were mahogany or “smoked” ash, according to Harkaer. “Smoking” involves coloring the ash with ammonia steam.

The chair below is a 1953 version in smoked ash with a canvas seat. Note we now have the familiar non-stitched arms. I much prefer the stitched arms. They sag a lot less over time.

Other interesting details from the monograph:

• The seat coverings were available in leather, undyed linen drill or canvas in brown blue or olive.
• After Klint’s death, his son designed a footstool to go with the chair.
• More than 150,000 official Safari chairs have been made since 1933.

— Christopher Schwarz

The leather arms of Roorkee chairs will sag if you use only one layer of leather. Historical Roorkees tended to use only one layer, so I’ve seen a lot of low-slung arms.

If you don’t want your arms to sag, there are several solutions. A quick solution is to glue a strip of polyester to the underside of each arm, which will prevent the arms from stretching. This works, but the polyester can show and can be ugly.

I prefer to double up the thickness of the leather to prevent stretching. To do this, you need to glue and stitch the two layers together. While I’ve stitched some leather seats for folding stools, I haven’t been brave enough to do the arms of a Roorkee, especially one that will go to a client.

(I am almost over this timidity, however.)

This fall I made a matching pair of Roorkees for a client and also worked with Popular Woodworking Magazine to produce a DVD on the construction process I used for the chairs. You can pre-order the DVD here. Or buy the download here.

To get the arms of these chairs just right, I hired Jason Thigpen of Texas Heritage Woodworkers to glue and stitch the arms for me. He did a fantastic job. That shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve seen his shop aprons or tool rolls. He does all the work in-house and is both a maker and a user – my kind of guy.

Today Jason posted a great blog entry on the tools and processes he used to stitch the Roorkee arms, with text, photos and a video. Check out the entry here. And if you need a tool roll, shop apron and/or leather-clad coffee mug, Jason is your guy.

— Christopher Schwarz

If you’d like a close look at some of the details of Kaare Klint’s Safari Chair, check out this video (OK, it’s a commercial) from Carl Hansen & Søn on the piece.

You get to see the elegant cigar-shape stretchers and how the slightly tapered tenons flow into the overall shape. Plus a bunch of nice close-ups of the way the leather is attached to the wood.

I’ve seen a lot of new Roorkee/Safari chairs on the market lately, some of them with design details I rejected. On my first Roorkees I used a vegetable-tanned leather that I left natural. Heck, I even sent photos of it to Popular Woodworking to use in the article published three years ago on building them. I quickly changed my mind on the leather color, thinking it to “fleshy” – almost a “Silence of the Roorkees” look.

But several design houses are now triumphing that look – natural leather with dark wood.

I’m still not a fan.

If you want to build one of these chairs, complete plans are in “Campaign Furniture,” now in its second printing.

— Christopher Schwarz