The working model of the Chairpanzee before production work begins. The final product will have some small changes compared to the image above.
I don’t keep a diary, I just look back at Instagram to see what I was doing on any given day. This is how I know The Chairpanzee was born on 11th April, as nothing more than an idea in search of a good name. That day, in the early stages of my COVID-19 infection, I sat at my desk designing a new low back chair. I used other chairs I admire as a reference point, noting their rake and splay angles to understand the visual effect they generate. Rake and splay are all very well on a drawing, but when it comes to making a chair what we really need are a sightline and a resultant angle for the legs. This approach allows us to drill with reference to a single sliding bevel (set to the resultant) which is positioned along the sightline. It struck me that a simple device to tell us those sightline and resultant angles based on any given rake and splay would be a useful tool to own, which brings us to today.
There are published tables available to use as a reference, but for this product I went back to first principles, enlisting my older brother (an Engineering Ph.D.) to do the hard bit. Shortly after, armed with lines of data, the first prototype was born. An important concept from the beginning was to return both the sightline and resultant for a single setting of rake and splay, which led to the double-sided design. Every good product needs a memorable name and, having christened an earlier product the Bevel Monkey, it seemed only right to continue the simian DNA line. My son George eventually won the pun-off on a family walk, coming up with the perfect name: Chairpanzee.
Collaboration is a key aspect of product development; it leads to ideas being challenged and ultimately creates a better end product. A good idea is also worth nothing without a route to market, so with both of those principles in mind, Chris Schwarz and I formed an alliance to develop a product that would become part of the Crucible range. We pulled apart the flaws in the first prototype, which was too big and suffered from racking sliders that jammed. We also needed to scratch an itch that Chris had: the thought that a wheel-type gauge might fit the bill. We got to a wheel gauge eventually and I still have a fondness for its Fibonacci-like pattern of holes, but it would have been too big and too expensive to produce. You have to be willing to drown a few ideas in the river on this journey.
By prototype three we were zeroing in on the concept of a double-sided slider, which could be produced to a high quality at an affordable price. We made an important step toward a printed product, which allowed us to reproduce detailed graphics and fine data on a durable surface. Laser engraving had been a useful development tool, but ultimately too costly as a production solution. Following creation of the graphics and layout, we arrived at the end of the story with prototype number four, which looks exactly like the product you’ll be able to have in your hands very soon (pictured at the top of this blog entry).
“Drew’s books and tool sales were invaluable to me in the 90s as I explored traditional woodworking. There was a fascinating world within the brown cover of his 1978 book ‘Country Woodcraft’ and Drew and Louise were really living it. From Louise’s baskets to a carved hauling yoke to bowls and spoons, I found wood, and the working of it, honored.”
Drew and Louise Langsner began their woodworking classes at Country Workshops in 1978 and ran them until 2017 – more than 400 classes in all. The instructor list reads like a who’s who of green woodworking, featuring Wille and Jögge Sundqvist, Jennie Alexander, Curtis Buchanan, Brian Boggs, Carl Swensson, John Brown, the toolmaker Hans Karlsson and more. Working with and alongside these great craftspeople, I’d bet Drew has seen more green woodworking than anyone alive. There’s so much content rattling around in Drew’s memory, and now he’s distilled much of that information into a new expanded edition of his 1978 book “Country Woodcraft.”
The world was young when the book first came out. If you wanted information like this back then, it was more than a click away. Mail order was the standard order of the day. That’s how I got the book. Then just a couple years later, a notice in small print in the back of Fine Woodworking alerted me to the existence of Drew’s then-fledgling school called Country Workshops. A long trip from Massachusetts down to North Carolina, and my world changed forever.
But the book started it, along with John Alexander’s “Make a Chair from a Tree,” which was published the same year. “Country Woodcraft” was a project-based book that really taught techniques, starting off with felling and splitting trees into usable sections and going through the making of all manner of household and farm implements. This book is where Americans first saw Wille Sundqvist make wooden spoons; Drew and Louise met Wille in 1976, then brought him to their farm two years later for some of the first courses their school ever ran. The hewn wooden bowls stem from the same source. White oak basketry and poplar bark boxes are among the many projects included here that they learned in their adopted home of southern Appalachia.
Now with the updates to this seminal book we have the benefit of all of Drew’s continued exploration. Having watched Drew now for much of 40 years, I can tell you he puts a tremendous amount of thought into his woodworking and teaching. Drew has always wanted to know how to use this tool, that technique, but also why to use them. And how to make them better. He has searched out great craftspeople and toolmakers and learned as much as he could from them, adapting and blending ideas from one to another. Refinement has been at the forefront of his work. Being a teacher and overseeing others instructing classes, Drew’s focus is often on how to convey his ideas to students. And they get more than their money’s worth. “Life-changing” is an adjective often used to describe students’ experiences at Country Workshops.
Reading the new edition of “Country Woodcraft” was as exciting for me as reading it the first time all those years ago. Great depth and detail, showing us what has changed his thinking through the decades and why. Things Drew couldn’t have known back then are carefully explained now – even down to what to do with the shavings! Many of us remember when the book first came around, but now the great influx of interest in green woodworking, spoon carving and other related crafts will introduce this well-deserving giant in the field to a whole new audience.
On Wednesday morning I shipped out my last commission furniture piece for a long time. Perhaps forever.
Last year I closed the ordering form on my personal site. And since then I have worked through the backlog of orders, chipping away until Wednesday when I dropped off a crate at the depot across the river.
For the last 10 years, commission work has been a third to half my income. The other half is writing and teaching. Commissions kept us afloat as we paid Madeline’s tuition at Ohio State and Katherine’s at Spalding University.
During the last three years, Lost Art Press, the commission work and the number of new designs in my sketchbooks took root, bloomed and became overgrown. And last year I had to make a choice.
Double or triple my prices for commissions to (likely) reduce them. As I build vernacular-inspired pieces, and I have a strong proletariat streak, that didn’t feel right.
Hire people to help out on both the commissions and shoulder some of my responsibilities for the press. That would put me back into managing other people’s work on a day-to-day basis. I’d rather get a simultaneous root canal/vasectomy without even an aspirin. I want to do the work, not manage it.
Shut down commissions and build work on spec.
I chose door No. 3.
In the coming months, I’ll occasionally list a piece for sale here on the blog. Lucy and I have decided we can afford the hit to my income (thanks to a debt-free life). This will free me to write and edit more books, build furniture pieces that have been struggling in the birth canal and to stay outwardly sane.
I’ve enjoyed working with customers since I took my first commission for a Shop of the Crafters Morris chair in 1997 from a couple in Texas. Since then, I’ve built some crazy stuff that made me a better woodworker. And I’ve met some people I now call friends.
I’ll miss some aspects of commission work. And now I am about to get into the truck and head to the lumberyard to build something for… who knows?
I’ve taken a few green woodworking classes, and I’ve lurked in the background for several others. What stands out to me from those experiences is that the axe is the tool most unfamiliar to green green woodworkers. Sure, we all know what an axe is, and we might have used one to split firewood.
But most woodworkers haven’t used an axe for carving until their first green woodworking class. I know I hadn’t. And my grandfather’s axe from his short stint as a carpenter on the L&N Railroad cut neither the mustard nor the wood (at least not as I needed it to).
So even though the pdf excerpt below is one of the appendices from Drew Langsner’s “Country Woodcraft: Then and Now,” I think it’s an excellent introduction to green woodworking.
Reminder: Until the physical book ships to the warehouse, all orders include a free pdf download of “Country Woodcraft: Then and Now” in its entirety.
James Krenov during a cello performance by Bernard Henderson and Marcia Sloane at the music stand he made in 1987. Photo by Paul Arnold.
We are taught from a young age that compromise and flexibility are golden attributes. I have seen their reward; I won’t go too far into my own sinuous background, but putting myself into different settings with good people, following their lead or being willing to bend my own path, has brought wonderful experiences and opportunities. In woodworking, it’s been ventures into chairmaking, Krenovian cabinetmaking, historic techniques, slapdash construction and basketweaving. In life, it means having a Master’s in computer music, working at a large media/publishing company, working with CNCs to produce violin parts, writing a book, living in five states in less than a decade and being an underemployed but happy craftsperson.
In my three years of researching, interviewing and writing “James Krenov: Leave Fingerprints,” a second lesson in compromise has emerged. There is a lot in Krenov’s story that points to the other side of the coin – the side that makes itself apparent when someone refuses to compromise their worldview or creative practice, even at the cost of their own well-being or success. To me, both the reward and punishment of that second approach is no more apparent than in Krenov’s trajectory from an obscure travelogue writer to a widely celebrated cabinetmaker.
As I interviewed people about Krenov – his students, colleagues, friends, supporters and detractors – the downside of his attitude became apparent. Krenov’s frequent lack of diplomacy in expressing his approach to craft closed doors and alienated many. It took him several tries at educational institutions to find a situation that met his demands or could handle his irascibility concerning the validity of other approaches. His articles in Sweden’s FORM magazine express his disenfranchisement from Scandinavian contemporaries and consumers, often because he thought they would not appreciate or adopt his idiosyncratic approach (though it was there that he reached a level of renown few could hope for). His outlook often made Krenov hard to please, and kept him looking on the other side of the fence (or ocean) for greener grass. It made it difficult (for many years, impossible) to make a living at his craft.
But in this lack of compromise, we can see the seeds of Krenov’s success. At the beginning of his career, a time when Scandinavia was moving toward functionalism and practicality, Krenov declared himself and his work to be outside of those considerations. He called for craftspeople, amateur and professional, to enjoy their work, whatever the wider public insisted about its efficacy or profitability. He was the strongest advocate for the inherent worth of work done well.
Krenov talking to a student at Anderson Ranch in 1989, during a teaching stint that summer. He’s wearing a “samue,” a work jacket worn by Buddhist monks that he was given during his time in Takayama, Japan, in 1988.
So many of us who insist on making furniture or practicing a craft at the highest standards we can muster, rationalize our position and damn the time or impracticality of its execution. We insist that our work is more durable and a better investment, or more timeless and not subject to trendiness or fads.
At several point in his career, Krenov relays these considerations – but he was working to different criteria, not obviously connected to financial or aesthetic concerns. Looking over his work and the lessons he taught, it’s clear that these were secondary (or even tertiary) concerns. He encouraged impracticality and insisted that his way was too difficult to be of use to a professional woodworker. He wanted to be remembered as a “stubborn, old enthusiast.”
I don’t mean to imply a lack of subtlety to his position; in fact, many of his favored students eschewed his path in aesthetics, technique and financial success. I offer up the idea that the “middle path” Krenov described between handwork and machine work – a compromise from many perspectives – was part of what made it so successful and appealing to his hundreds of thousands of readers. And there were students who disagreed with his advice that he came to support or enable – in spite of their resistance. He butted heads with students who, like him, insisted on the value of their own ideas, but in the end many of them won his respect. He could be an inspiring teacher and a friendly mentor, whimsical and enthusiastic.
Krenov’s 1962 “No-Glass Showcase of Lemon Wood,” made just three years after his graduation from Malmsten’s school in Stockholm. The early appearance of some of Krenov’s signature techniques and aesthetics points to his early talents in the craft and is evidence of a lifelong refinement of their execution. Photo by Bengt Carlén.
Krenov’s ability to resist outside influence, especially in terms of income, was enabled by the support of Britta, his wife, who was a high school teacher with a degree in economics and finance. He was also supported by the socialist infrastructure of Sweden, which awarded him stipends and gave Britta a steady pension after her retirement in the late 1970s.
But there is a lesson that can be distilled from Krenov’s path. It isn’t exactly “stick to your guns” or “ignore the haters.” But, after years of my own consideration of Krenov’s story and the memories of those who crossed his path, I think one part of the whole reads something like this: Take in what you can from those around you when you set off, work hard to examine what you value and/or enjoy in your chosen pursuit and be determined enough to pursue it at whatever cost.
A photo of Krenov on his last day at the College of the Redwoods in 2002. Photo by Leonard Bechler.
It may not lead to success in any traditional sense. Krenov’s career might be measured in book sales or influence, but I think it’s best measured by the memories that were shared with me. His students remember Krenov’s satisfaction in shaping the leg of a stand late into the evenings, or the time he spent happily arranging and composing a freshly sawn batch of veneers. Pursue fulfillment; if you’re lucky or dogged or particularly talented, other measures of success might come to pass. If you’re not, at least you can say it wasn’t a waste of time.
There are many ways to poke holes in this idea as it applies to your own world; I’m not one to promote orthodoxy or dogma. You might be able to follow Krenov’s path with a more polite or amenable attitude. You could pick fulfillment as a guide, and still frequently change the tack of your pursuit. But if you read Krenov’s story (and I hope you will) I think the case study in rigidity and conviction that he lived is worthy of consideration. It is not a prescription, but it might be a part of finding your own path.
