The following is excerpted from “Grandpa’s Workshop,” by Maurice Pommier. This 48-page book was translated by Brian Anderson, an American-born writer and woodworker who lives and works in France. It is ostensibly a book for children, though the stories, lessons and drawing style will appeal to anyone who has an appreciation for the natural and the fantastical.
At 7 a.m. on a Wednesday in mid-August, 2020, it’s 52° (F). There was snow a couple of days ago. Bars and cinemas are open as usual, and no one’s wearing a mask.
If this picture strikes you as something out of a parallel universe, that’s because it is. I’m on the phone with Laura McCusker, who’s bundled up in a sweater, relaxing at the end of her day in Hobart, Tasmania, which she calls “an island, off an island, at the bottom of the planet.”
“Tasmania is a good place to be riding this out,” she says, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic. “We are an island state. The borders were locked down early; there have been no active cases for two months.”
The more you learn about Laura and her life, the lovelier this picture becomes. Laura and her husband, Pete Howard, live in West Hobart, a five-minute walk from the center of town. Their three-bedroom house sits on a hill overlooking the river, with fruit trees, a dog and chickens in the backyard. A bush reserve down the street is home to wallabies, possums and pademelons.
Laura’s workshop, in the suburb of Moonah, Tasmania (an indigenous name for a type of eucalyptus, or gum tree), is a 17-minute ride away on her electric bike. The building was constructed as an apple-packing shed circa 1911. Layers of brick with sawdust insulation between them keep the temperature stable and the shop noise down. Add a timber ceiling, picture the place set by a babbling brook, and you’ll get why Laura calls it “completely idyllic. When we came here from Sydney, I couldn’t believe there could be such pretty industrial buildings so close to town.” Tasmania has a lot of Georgian buildings, she goes on; because the economy was depressed for many years, the buildings escaped the razing that most of us know as “development.” As a result, “a lot of old towns look like they’re straight out of Jane Austen.”
Laura’s background is more cosmopolitan than her charmed domestic and work situation these days might suggest. The second of four children (her brother, Jim, is two years older; sister, Anna-Lucia, 2-1/2 years younger; and the baby of the family, Daniel, is 8 years younger), she was born to a Brazilian mother, Lucia, and her father, Charlie, is from Northern Ireland via Glasgow and Adelaide. Both parents are doctors (Lucia, now retired, is a specialist in chronic pain management and palliative care, and Charlie’s an OB-GYN) who met as students at The Memorial Hospital in Worcester, Mass., did their residencies in Glasgow, then returned to Australia.
Laura went to an all-girls high school in Sydney where classes beyond strict academics were limited to home economics or textiles and design. She had no idea that there were people who made furniture for a living. She understood that her future would involve university, followed by a profession.
But in the pause between high school and college, Laura planned to travel. Shortly after she took her final exams at the age of 18, she flew to London. Two days later, she’d slept off the jet lag and headed over to a pub for something to eat. “The guy behind the bar said ‘Oh, you’re from Australia. Are you looking for work?’” He mentioned that a pub around the corner was hiring. She checked it out. “Does the job come with accommodation?” she asked. It didn’t, but the manager said she could sleep on the pull-out sofa in his flat upstairs. Pete was the manager’s flat mate. “I met Pete on the third day I was in London, and that was 27 years ago,” she says, laughing.
They stayed in London for about 18 months, with a trip around the Greek islands along the way. After a while, Laura switched from selling drinks to selling medicinal herbs for Culpepers in Covent Garden. Then, in 1994, it was time to go home and enroll at Sydney University.
Pete followed six weeks later. While she was in classes, he was employed – first at a butcher’s shop, then at a bakery. He forewent candlestick making in favor of management; two notable jobs were preparing for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and working for Opera Australia.
Laura started a degree in fine arts, but left because “it wasn’t hands-on enough.” She took classes in medieval history, classical mythology and social anthropology, then heard that students in an architecture class were building tables. She signed up for the course. But when she heard it was going to cover concrete stress fracture points and building regulations, she says, she “ran screaming from the room,” thinking “there must be an easier way to learn how to build a table.”
Shortly after, she entered a training apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker through Lidcombe TAFE, a vocational school in New South Wales, where she began what would result in a Certificate III in Cabinetmaking.
It was the late-1990s, when a lot of manufacturing was moving to China; that made it hard to find a position as an apprentice. She hired on at a business that made high-end furniture out of particleboard with architectural veneers for offices and law libraries. While it was valuable experience, it wasn’t what she really wanted to do. “It wasn’t solid timber, and it wasn’t fine woodworking,” she says, “but it was a fantastic training in how to be efficient in the workshop and get the job done.” So after a couple of years she went back to school, this time at the Sturt School for Wood, just outside Sydney, which specializes in craft-based traditional woodworking. There she learned coopering, laminating, steam bending, dovetails – the whole shebang.
That was a year-long course. “Completely wonderful,” she says of the experience. “It was monastic. Beautiful. You could cut dovetails to your heart’s content seven days a week.” But she will always appreciate the pragmatic training she got from the job in the cabinet shop, where she learned to run a business and pay the rent.
On graduating from the Sturt School, Laura moved to Sydney and worked at a co-operative, the Splinter Workshop. There were about eight members who shared the space and machines. She set up her own corner and started building and selling furniture, relying on word of mouth at the start. When she didn’t have paid work, she built prototypes to her own design and did her best to get coverage in the local paper. She also tried small-batch products such as wooden vessels to hold ceramic dishes for burning essential oils, a venture that she says barely covered her costs, “but it was really good training in small-batch production, marketing and building relationships with galleries.” She worked there for five years, during which she gave birth to her daughter, Ella, and her son, Jimmy.
In 2003, when Ella was 4 and Jimmy a few months old, she and Pete decided to move to Tasmania. Real estate prices in Sydney were out of reach for a furniture maker and arts administrator, and getting worse by the month. They realized that quality of life was important and felt that they wanted to give their kids a home where they could settle, rather than having to move every year or so from rental to rental. With no local contacts or work lined up, Laura took a job at a shipyard, building furniture for a 60-metre (nearly 200′) luxury super yacht. She also completed a bachelor’s degree in adult and vocational education, which certified her to train others in the trades. It seemed like a good idea – she could spend part of her time teaching and the rest in design-build for her own business. But as things turned out, she didn’t need the back-up plan. “Work got so busy, it was hard to do both,” she says. “I made the choice to go back to my studio practice.” In 2010, she convinced Pete to leave his work in management and work with her full-time.
When we spoke, they’d just finished a set of shelves for a local client and would be moving on to a couple of mobile cabinets for a client in the hospitality business. Other jobs coming up include a big dining table in Huon pine. They’re also trying to finish up some jobs at home, such as a pair of decks and a studio flat on the lower floor of their house. It may be a place for friends to stay, or perhaps an AirBnB.
They work primarily in local species. One is Tasmanian oak, which Laura points out is not in fact an oak, but an umbrella term for a variety of eucalypts. “In Tasmania they call up to five different euycalypt species ‘Tasmanian oak,’ she says. But in Victoria they’ve got the same lumber and they call it ‘Victorian ash.’” It’s a big tree, so she suspects Europeans who took over the region simply called it “oak” in a generic sense. It’s easy to get, kiln-dried, quartersawn, consistent in color and consistent in price. Although it’s used primarily as a building material, Laura says “I actually think it’s a beautiful furniture timber as well.”
Huon pine is another prized species. Laura says it’s soft, and perfect for boats. But “it costs a lot of money, so people think it has status.” Another regional species is blackwood, which she compares to chocolate cake. It’s variable in color, which makes it hard to get a uniform look for a piece of furniture, and the dust is carcinogenic.
Much of their work to date has been for clients in the tourism and hospitality industries – hotels and event spaces. They’ve done pieces for the MONA Museum and built tables and seating for restaurants. Tasmania’s economy relies heavily on tourism; as a result of the pandemic, that kind of business has taken a big hit. But as more people have shifted to working from home, those in the building trades have had new orders for decks, home offices and interior renovations. She and Pete have moved, at least for now, from contract clients to domestic ones. “I feel we’ve been really lucky,” Laura says. “It’s kind of weird to get on national television and see what’s happening in the rest of the world.”
She didn’t expect to make a living as a furniture maker when they moved to Tasmania, but as it happens, she could not have been more mistaken about the prospects for doing just that. “If I could find some way to live, own my own home and have a high quality of life,” she remembers dreaming, “to actually have a viable business making beautiful and interesting furniture for people… I never expected to be able to do that in Tasmania.” Handmade furniture, she explains, was always “very, very expensive.” But Tasmania turned out to be the ideal place to make furniture for a living. “You don’t have huge overheads, so it doesn’t have to be that expensive or exclusive.” She compares her current circumstances to those of the past, recalling how she and Pete weighed pros and cons as they considered the move to Hobart. There’s a lot of money in Sydney – “big-city paychecks.” She wouldn’t have that in Tasmania. But, she thought, “I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll flip burgers, or I’ll teach.” In fact, her studio rent plummeted with the move; her annual rent for that idyllic timber-ceilinged industrial space is what she paid in Sydney each month. Marketing via the internet means she doesn’t have to sell her work through galleries; given that galleries typically make their money by doubling (or more than doubling) the price an artist puts on her work, selling directly to customers makes her work vastly more affordable. And shipping costs from Hobart to Sydney have turned out to be almost the same as what it cost to move a piece of furniture from her studio on one side of Sydney to the other.
“But it’s also a much nicer quality of life,” Laura adds. “Living in a big city was wonderful when we didn’t have kids, but once you have kids it all changes. We had a wish list consisting of (amongst other things) good coffee, live music/theatre venues, good food, museums, beautiful beaches, bushwalks etc. and an airport so we could get out quickly if and when we needed to visit family overseas and interstate. Hobart ticked all these boxes and more…they even have the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and now there’s MONA. It’s also in the same timezone as Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane so it doesn’t really feel like we’re very far away from grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins when the kids speak on the phone. Hobart is still a small town but has enough to keep us interested and it’s only a short flight to Melbourne or Sydney when you feel you need a fix.”
At this point, Ella has one year to go in her fine arts degree at the National Art School in Sydney, with a focus on printmaking. Tuition is paid for by the government through the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS); students repay the investment in their education by means of a prorated tax over the course of their working life, once their income reaches a certain threshold – interest-free. “So, if you’re an artist or a teacher or a nurse, you pay a lower rate” and it takes longer, Laura explains.
Jim, she says, “has a really mathematical and engineering brain” but is also into philosophy – he reads Kafka, Foucault and Chomsky “for fun” – and plays piano and guitar. At 17, she says he’s “interested in everything. I don’t think he’ll be hanging around Hobart.”
Reflecting on how views of work and higher ed have changed over the course of her life, Laura recalls the way things were when she was the age her kids are now. “If you’re intelligent and good at academics, you will go to university and become a professional. The fact that I didn’t want to do that – the idea of wanting to go into a trade – wasn’t ever on the table. If you’re a girl who’s smart, you don’t go into a trade.
“I think I was just a bit of a shit stirrer; I probably wanted to wind my parents up a bit.” She mentions Matthew Crawford and Richard Sennett. “If you work with your hands, you’re not very bright, and if you’re bright you get ‘rewarded’ by being able to work behind a computer for up to 10 hours a day!
“I feel very lucky to have a job where it’s intellectually challenging as well as physically rewarding. I’m able to be creative and analytical… It’s like productive yoga. It feels so good to be moving and producing and making and…by the end of the day you look around and it’s very satisfying.”
– Nancy Hiller, author of “Kitchen Think” and “Making Things Work.”
For me, it is easier to launch a book-writing project than begin a big woodworking job. That’s because with a book, I can begin by writing a chapter at any point in the narrative.
That doesn’t work in woodworking. You shouldn’t build a dresser by first sanding and finishing all the rough lumber.
I’ve tried to start a book by writing chapter one several times. The swarf in the mutton tallow here is that by the time you write your final chapter, your book has wandered in a different (probably better) direction than your TOC. So you have to throw out the first few chapters and rewrite them.
Here’s how I do it now. I write a chapter somewhere in the middle of the book – one that I have a handle on. If it’s a woodworking book, maybe it’s the chapter on how the hardware is made, or the one that compares several historical workbench forms. It’s something that I know forward and backward and can knock out.
We ask our new authors to do this, too. This is for two reasons: One, it gives the authors confidence that they can write a book. That first chapter is a significant step.
Then we edit this sample chapter and give the author a list of ways to improve the writing. Some authors ignore the advice (which makes more work for me) and some take it to heart. They tape notes to their computers to remind them of their weaknesses.
Here are the most common problems. (If you want to improve your writing, buy a used copy of “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser. There are millions of extant copies. I sometimes buy a bunch at Half-price Books for $2 each and send them to authors who request help.)
I could go on with this list for about nine weeks, like when I taught news writing classes at Ohio State and the University of Kentucky.
Bottom line: Write as if your audience is a bunch of 8th graders. If you can explain complex ideas to 8th graders, you have achieved something few writers do.
I haven’t decided where to begin with “The Stick Chair Book.” Perhaps the chapter on how to make stretchers. It’s shorter than other chapters about the seat, the legs and the arms. That’s because I don’t have as many tricks to make stretchers as I do for the other components.
Or perhaps I need to figure out some new stretcher tricks.
Let the self-doubt commence.
— Christopher Schwarz
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
Editor’s note: This time we discuss an antique chair with a finish that is “a wet antiquarian’s wet dream.” Or “Torched Feces” as Rudy would call it. The chair in total is maybe too perfect to be true, and sometimes Wales stretches all the way to China. We still love it. And as always, we don’t expect anyone to take any of our theories seriously. Chris also wishes for a blacksmith screw and regrets it immediately. As always, the language here is a bit on the salty side and we do mention words like “joint” and “shaved” several times. For those who only have Sting records in their collection, please stop reading now and click this link instead.
Chris: How ’bout we drag out the comb back?
Klaus: Let’s do it! Here it is:
Rudy: Here’s the info from the antiques dealer: “Original late 18th Century painted Welsh comb back chair. Mixed woods elm & ash.
Dimensions:
95.3 cms High (37.5 inches)
55.9 cms Wide (22 inches)
78.7 cms Deep (31 inches)”
Chris: Is this chair from Far East Wales?
Rudy: I think it may be!
Klaus: This definitely looks like a Far East Wales chair, yes. Very far east.
Rudy: Judging from the weird finish.
Klaus : The finish IS weird.
Chris: Featuring a Far East Wales Finish That is Too Good?
Klaus : I would at least suspect that.
Chris: The finish is an antiquarian’s wet dream.
Rudy: And it is evenly worn on the sticks..
Klaus: And totally worn off on the back of the crest..?!
Chris : That’s because Welsh horses rubbed against it for 200 years.
Klaus: Of course.
Rudy: True, did you not know that is what they do?
Klaus: By Welsh horses you mean the Welsh men’s wives?
Chris: No. Their sheep. Same thing.
Rudy: Haha!
Klaus: So I’ve herd.
Chris: Herd! Haha.
Rudy: The chair looks a bit like World War II German SS camouflage uniforms.
Chris: Oh it’s Nazi time already?
Klaus: Can we call this a Nazi chair?
Chris : Not again!
Rudy: Hitler would have been proud! Just don’t put the chair outside or you’ll never be able to find it again.
Chris: I’m afraid this chair was born way after Hitler. But damn the form is nice.
Klaus: Unfortunately, I think Chris has a point here. This chair was probably made with a Festool router.
Rudy: Well to be fair, Hitler was born a long time ago.
Rudy: The form is nice – that is why we picked it! I like its inviting stance.
Klaus: Yeah, LOVE the stance.
Chris: Like I don’t even know where to start with this chair. It’s so good.
Klaus : Even the imperfections, like the uneven bow in the long sticks, are nice.
Rudy: The crest. I like the crest.
Klaus: Yeah, the crest is gracious.
Chris: I love the through-tenons in the crest.
Klaus: Yes, me too.
Chris: So wonky and so good. TOO GOOD.
Rudy : Yes, very well done indeed. It gives the chair a lot of character.
Klaus: The crest has a perfect shape. Perfect length, too. I wanna make a crest like that.
Rudy: Me too. It looks balanced, but spontaneous.
Chris: It will be a bitch to drill. I’d make it with straight edges first. Drill the mortises. Then shape it. Or maybe you could shape it first and drill the mortises in a vise.
Klaus: The back tilt of the arm is great.
Chris: And the way the hands are raised up. Like GIVE ME A HUG!
Klaus: The arm is also a three-piece arm, with some kind of half-lap joint. And I love the long doubler on this one, too.
Chris : You can see the joints in one of the photos.
Chris: I think this guy should do a chair book for Lost Art Press.
Rudy: Very talented!
Chris: I’d love to see how he/she works. By the way, I like the curved posts at the front. I did that on one chair and want to get back to it.
Rudy: True, that adds to the inviting character of the chair.
Klaus: Did you also make them flat like these?
Chris: Kinda. They were from curved branches. Shaved a little roundish.
Klaus: Are they mortised through the arm with a square mortise?
Rudy: It looks like they are epoxied onto the seat.
Chris: Mine was mortised into the seat with a round tenon (wedged from below). And then I (cringe) screwed it to the underside of the arm.
Rudy: Will the blasphemies ever stop…
Klaus: We all have our sins..
Chris: It was a square-drive screw. I have sinned. Bad.
Klaus: Oh no.
Chris: I meant to replace it with a blacksmith nail…
Klaus: …but the pocket screw was so solid…
Rudy: Or a blacksmith screw!
Chris: I would love a blacksmith screw! (He said, immediately regretting the choice of words).
Rudy: I know one here in Germany. He would be happy to screw you.
Klaus: Haha! Anyway, how come this maker makes the chairs look like they’ve been drowned and tossed out a window? Assuming of course, that this chair is younger than my daughter’s hamster.
Chris: They sell like this. People love this look.
Rudy: The chair does indeed look a bit like a corpse that has been submerged for three weeks.
Chris: We have a guy near here who specializes in this finish. He does it with a torch.
Klaus: Interesting. I will throw my next chair out of the window then. Then burn it afterwards.
Rudy: I will have to experiment with this technique too, then. I think this looks torched as well, now that you say it.
Chris: We did an article on it at Popular Woodworking years ago. Remind me to dig it up for you.
Klaus: Chris, can you dig up that article about fake old finishes from Popular Woodworking?
Rudy: Chris, could you please dig up that article you did in Popular Woodworking years ago?
Chris: F&%# you!
Klaus: Haha. Anyway, let’s be friends.
Rudy: Yes. Let’s be the peaceful Chair Chat Ladies.
Klaus: I’m not a big fan of the broomstick legs.
Chris: At least they aren’t tree trunks. What I would like to know is how high the armbow is off the seat – at the back and the front.
Klaus: I’d say 7″ at the back and 8-3/4″ in the front.
Rudy: It looks pretty low at the back.
Chris: Agree. And the back sticks look like they pitch back pretty severely. More like a Gibson.
Rudy: Totally, I was going to say that. Especially under the armbow.
Klaus: Very leaned back. Looks super comfy.
Chris: Agree! It leans Almost to 25°, maybe 20°?
Klaus: The deep seat, the heavily leaning back and the lifted arm – it all pitches you into the chair.
Chris: Yup. Dude knows how to push my chair buttons.
Rudy: Mine too. The bastard.
Klaus: All the parts are also proportional to each other in size. That’s nice.
Rudy: Yes, it is a very balanced chair.
Chris: And its perfection is what led me to say: Far East Wales.
Rudy: I wonder if he/she works from historical examples or their own design?
Chris: Well , there is at least no awkwardness about it.
Klaus: Absolutely none.
Chris: And almost all of these chairs, the real antique ones, have some fault that is charming by being off.
Klaus: Yes, exactly. The imperfections make them perfect.
Rudy: Look at that back leg, how the tear-out from that knot gives it character.
Chris: Yeah. But it’s too perfect. Like a scar on a supermodel.
Klaus: Well, if that is done intentionally, then my hat is off for this maker. I don’t wear hats, but I would for this guy.
Chris: It doesn’t really make it wonky. Just cool.
Rudy: In some way the chair is so perfect I would like to see one without the torched paint finish.
Chris: I know a couple people who work in the Fake Trade. They do stuff like this all the time. Many times they use old parts to make a new fake antique.
Rudy: I believe that is what happens here, too.
Klaus: I’ve heard about shipping containers full of chair parts from old chairs, going from the UK to China.
Rudy: But can they re-use the seat?
Chris : I would think no. But I’m no Fake Artist. If it were me, I’d want all the wonky sticks. And legs.
Rudy: In some way it is a nice thing that the chair parts have a second life.
Chris: Better than firewood!
Klaus : Sure, just don’t sell it for $4,000 USD.
Chris: I don’t have a problem with the price. Just the deception.
Rudy: Yes, they should not be called Original late 18th Century.
Chris: Fakes have to be called out. Or they become part of the furniture record. Museums are reportedly full of fakes.
Klaus: I have become so disillusioned lately. I can’t even look at an antique chair anymore without suspecting it’s from Far East Wales. Anyway, did we have any poop or fart jokes at all today?
Rudy: Poop!
Klaus: Fart!
Chris : Well I hope that feces is involved in the finishing process.
Rudy: It sure looks like that!
Klaus: Something has definitely been smeared onto it.
Rudy: Torched feces.
Klaus: The Torched Feces Finish Chair™.
Rudy: The SS Torched Feces Camouflage Chair™.
Chris: That’s the name of the chair! …and my next punk band.
Klaus: Hello, I’m Chris and we’re SS Torched Feces Finish!
Chris : Hello Cleveland!
Klaus: This first song is called The Queen Poops Too!
Rudy: And song number two:
Chris: Hahaha! Shi&&y song.
Klaus: And the bonus track: Blacksmith Screw!
Rudy: Out now in Cleveland only!
Chris: Let’s go on tour!
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.
— Christopher Schwarz