If you are into chairs and history, make time very soon to watch this 90-minute film: “Chair Times: A History of Seating – From 1800 to Today.” The Vitra Design Museum is streaming it for free right now, and I don’t know how long that will last.
The film is a beautiful tour through a portion of Vitra’s historical collection of chairs, which spans more than 200 years of commercial production. The film, which is in German, French and English (with English subtitles), covers the work of many of the important designers and innovators – particularly in the 20th century.
Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman emeritus of Vitra, is the host, and he and his guests examine the chairs and discuss what is important or interesting about them (it’s like a very refined Chair Chat).
Many of these chairs are not to my taste at all. There is a lot of tubular steel and plastic that receives a lot of praise. But the enthusiasm and deep knowledge of the people in the film make it a joy to watch (even if you would stab an inflatable plastic chair to death just on principle).
Vitra produces many beautiful chairs. It also makes delightful miniature versions of historical chairs that are astonishing in their detail (I’ve seen several in person). These miniatures are used in the film and are also worth seeing.
A few weeks back, hand-tool woodworker, luthier, musicologist and performer Aaron Keim sent us a book and CD he and his wife, Nicole Keim, published to encourage people to learn and enjoy some work songs. Titled, “Let the Work I do Speak for Me,” the book (and CD) is a collection of 14 tunes (some traditional, others more contemporary) with a brief history of each song, the words, chords and tabs, plus links to tutorials.
Aaron plays the ukelele and banjo (and makes them), so many of the songs include the tabs and tuning for those instruments – but I pulled my Martin D1 out of the back of my closet to see if I could pick out a few tunes, and had no trouble (other than than the self-inflicted trouble of almost never practicing my guitar, and the resultant sore fingers).
It’s a fun project, and thanks to the hand lettering (by Nicole), it feels folksy and personal – as it should.
Whenever I am asked to build a rocking chair, I say: “Sorry, I don’t make them. They are a totally different animal than what I build.”
But if you could centrifuge the polite Southerner out of my response, it might sound more like: “Gawd, I cannot abide rocking chairs.”
I know. It’s a weird hill to die on. But I have honestly never liked rocking chairs. I don’t like their limited functionality. I don’t like sitting in them. And I don’t like the way they look.
Some of you are thinking (while flinging your pizza crusts at the computer screen) that I have perhaps never sat in a good rocking chair. Not true. I have been to the mountain in Rancho Cucamonga. The first time I met Sam Maloof, he took me into his restored childhood home and let me sit in every one of the chairs there, including multiple rockers. The chairs were beautiful in every way. But when I sat in them, I felt the same way when I sit in any rocker – unsteady.
I like a chair that feels sturdy when it embraces you – not roll back on its heels like a tipsy aunt at a wedding. My regular chairs can be used for multiple tasks. You can type at a desk. Eat at a dining table. Play a guitar. Or sit back with a drink. And if you want to “rock,” you can tip back on the chair’s rear legs and balance.
Some people think this is savagery. I think it’s the best thing in the world.
Have you ever tried eating at the dinner table in a rocking chair? Or typing? I have, and it’s not fun.
I know you are thinking: Think of the children! Rocking chairs are designed to lull babies to sleep. That didn’t work with my kids. We had a rocking chair in the nursery and it just seemed to make them spit up more on my shoulder.
To be honest, I think rocking chairs are more symbolic than functional. Here in the South they are on most every porch. The Cracker Barrel restaurants will have 20 of them lined up outside for people waiting for their fried chicken dinner. The rocking chair symbolizes leisure time and relaxation. And maybe I’m just too tightly wound for that.
Or maybe I just get motion sick too easily. Mom says when I was a baby I’d throw up my hot dog lunch all over the car window during even a short trip.
So perhaps I should take two dramamine and shut the heck up.
I am not much of one for New Year’s Resolutions, preferring instead to periodically articulate attainable goals for the coming year rather than pie-in-the-sky wishes that will soon evaporate. But this year I was adamant that the pseudo-albatross of “A Period Finishers Manual” would be on that list for the last time. Yes, it has simultaneously been a labor of love while being a weight on my neck for the past few years.
Last week was a momentous one here in the hinterlands: The first installment of the book was sent to the first group of reviewers for their critiques, feedback and guidance. These folks were selected as readers specifically because they were avowedly finishers of limited experience, and could tell me whether or not what I was writing made sense to them. They are the proxies for every woodworker who might eventually pick up the book.
As we began I gave them this charge:
“I wrote the entire manuscript for the Studley book in about six weeks averaging over a thousand words a day. I have been working on this one off-and-on for almost six years, happy sometimes with a couple hundred words at a time. In the former case it was all I could do to wring out a manuscript from what I thought was a paucity of knowledge and yet it flowed like water from a firehose. I am having the exact opposite problem here, trying to cut it down to an easily readable yet beneficially instructive book, a determination you are charged with helping me to achieve.
“My tone is just the way I write, I want the reader to feel as though we are simply conversing.
“Further complicating things on my end is that I do not write in a linear fashion, never have and likely never will. I’m 65 with little desire for any fundamental changes in life. In other words I do not begin at The Beginning and conclude at The End. I write episodically, creating and working on vignettes throughout the manuscript as the spirit moves me (even true when I write fiction) then merging them and backfilling as necessary. It is a Billy Pilgrim sorta thing, I guess, or was it George Orr? That results in the current situation wherein the skeleton of the manuscript is complete but the connective tissues are being grafted in now. That is sometimes much more time consuming than creating the original mass of words.
“My current strategy is to get you the manuscript in a linear fashion, hence this first document is the Introduction, basically the mission statement of the book. Though not at all technical, it should give you some sort of roadmap about the journey we have begun together. Feel free with your comments and edits.”
From this point on, approximately every two weeks, another chapter of the manuscript will be sent to this naïvely valiant group of volunteers. I say “naïve” because by the time we are finished, they, too, will be glad to see it in the rear-view mirror of their lives.
Once a passage has passed from my hand to theirs and back, with the revisions integrated (I may or may not accept their suggestions, but the results thus far indicate we are all on the same page – all the suggestions have been excellent and useful), the sections will be passed on to the second group of reviewers. They are highly experienced finishers with decades of experience, which will allow them to comment on the workbench techniques and technical veracity of my verbiage.
At the moment the manuscript is nine chapters, although a couple of them are quite long-ish and may be subdivided.
It looks like I just might meet my goal of being able to move on to the next Roubo volume by Christmas.
For woodworkers who are interested in chairmaking or vernacular furniture, we now stock a new book from Wales that we think you’ll find invaluable. “The Welsh Stick Chair: A Visual Record” by Tim and Betsan Bowen is a photographic exploration of the best Welsh stick chairs (and other vernacular items) they have studied during their careers as antique dealers.
The book is $27 and is available to ship immediately. U.S. customers can order it here. Customers in the U.K. can order it directly from the Bowens here.
— Christopher Schwarz
Here is more information on the book from our product description:
The best way to develop an eye for chair design is to study lots of excellent and authentic examples. Tim and Betsan Bowen, owners of Tim Bowen Antiques in Wales, have long specialized in vernacular furniture and folk art from Wales and Britain in general. And now they have poured that knowledge into a delightful and informative book, “The Welsh Stick Chair: A Visual Record.”
Published by the Bowens in Wales, “The Welsh Stick Chair” is a photographic record of 31 of the most interesting Welsh chairs that have passed through their gallery in Ferryside. The chairs range from rough-and-ready examples all the way up to the chair that John Brown declared was the finest Welsh form he’d ever seen.
The pieces are illustrated with beautiful full-color photos and text (both in Welsh and English) that discusses each chair’s known provenance, repairs, materials and construction methods. (This is not a book of plans; nor does it include dimensions.)
Many of the chairs in the book are stunning forms, and are examples that you won’t see on the internet or in other books on Welsh furniture. In addition to the 31 chairs, the Bowens included 13 related vernacular forms at the end of the book, including a number of staked stools, cricket tables and a pig bench. Plus there’s a map of Wales that designates where each piece in the book likely originated.
“The Welsh Stick Chair: A Visual Record” is softcover and measures 7” x 9-3/8” with 120 pages. The paper is a heavy matte stock that is nice and white, leading to excellent detail and color reproduction.
If you are interested in vernacular chairs or Welsh furniture in general, this book is highly recommended. Quantities are limited.