One of the unexpected treats of visiting Wales this month was getting to visit the shop of Tim Bowen, an antiques dealer in Ferryside who specializes in vernacular furniture from Wales and the rest of Britain.
If you like Welsh stick chairs, or vernacular furniture in general, Tim’s Instagram account (@tim_bowen_antiques) is a great way to keep up with the things he picks up and shows the world. Chairmaker Chris Williams, who has been friends with Tim for years, took us over and Tim pulled out some interesting chairs from his shop and his personal collection for us to examine.
My two favorite pieces were a chair from Tim’s personal collection that looks like it was made in a barn with just a few tools. The armbow has a slashing scarf joint across its back, and the whole chair looks like it was made with both urgency and skill.
The other chair had a lovely single-piece arm and traces of early – if not original – paint.
All of the chairs Tim showed us were good enough to populate a museum gallery. And they represented a broad swath of Welsh chairmaking, from the craft at its most elemental all the way up to a chair that was almost as refined at the chairs that Chris Williams makes, with delicate decorative details.
Tim Bowen, right, and Chris examine a Welsh chair’s details.
Plus, I got to touch the chairs. All over. Feel the flats on the stretchers and the shape of the sticks. You can’t get that at a museum (not without getting thrown out shortly afterward).
Tim spent a good couple hours with us, patiently explaining what he knew about each chair – and what he didn’t. After decades in the trade, Tim is careful about making many official declarations about the date, provenance or even species of wood in any particular piece. He’s seen too many chairs in his career.
This is our last full day in Wales – tomorrow we head to Ireland for some rest and (sorry Lucy) more chairs.
The Lost Art Press storefront will be open this Saturday (Nov. 9, 2019) from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. This is your opportunity to talk with fellow woodworkers, ask any questions about the craft that have been bugging you and perhaps learn a new technique at the bench. Plus, there’s only this Saturday and Dec. 14 to visit before the holidays, then we won’t be open again until June 2020 (click here for more info on next year’s open days).
We’ll have our full line of Lost Art Press books (excepting “The Anarchist’s Design Book” – Christopher is working on a revised edition that will go to press soon) and we’ve a few Crucible Lump Hammers, scrapers and burnishers for sale.
At 2 p.m., I’ll give a presentation on dovetails, including a few simple “tricks” to get them nice and tight…but not too tight.
As always, there are a couple of ongoing projects in the shop for you to examine (including the ongoing project of working on the shop itself).
I am finishing up work on a super-sized English tool chest commission, and if all goes well this week, I’ll be fitting out the interior and/or installing a cool lock on Saturday.
Brendan Gaffney is working on a tour-de-force writing chair – a mahogany post-and-rung rocker with an outboard desk and drawers (really).
Plus we have a couple of Chris’s chairs you can check out (he’ll be on a plane, traveling back from Ireland – no doubt with a camera card full of photos of Gibson chairs).
Come for the Woodworking, Stay for the Food And while you’re here, make time for brunch, lunch or a late lunch; here’s some great places to eat that you can walk to:
Otto’s: A fantastic brunch (you might want to make reservations just to be sure).
Tuba Backing Co: Pretzels and yummy things on pretzels – opens at 3 p.m. (It’s a new place, and open to the public right now only on Saturday afternoons/evenings…so I’ve had time to try only four offerings thus far – all delicious)
Crafts & Vines: A wine bar (they have beer and spirits, too) that we love – light bites including a cheese and meats board, house-made beef jerky, and whatever goodness is cooking on the Big Green Egg. (Maybe save this one for the early evening…so the Big Green Egg dish of the day is available.)
Also worth seeing in town:
The Cincinnati Art Museum has three new featured exhibits: “Treasures from the Spanish World,” “Women Breaking Boundaries” and “The Levee: A Photographer in the American South” along with an impressive decorative arts collection (and general admission is free).
The Contemporary Arts Center (the CAC) is also free and is currently featuring the work of Brazilian artist Sandra Cinto.
And The Cincinnati Museum Center is has reopened (following an extensive and impressive renovation). You can lose an entire day here touring the multiple museums – or just gazing around the rotunda.
One of the many vernacular furniture forms I’m fascinated with is the Orkney chair, which combines joined pieces of wood (sometimes driftwood) plus woven straw for the back.
The chair saw great commercial success starting in the late 19th century when David Kirkness began making them in large numbers in his workshop in the Orkney Islands, Scotland. Kirkness’s shop made upward of 14,000 chairs in his lifetime, according to the V&A exhibit.
The chairs are still made today commercially by such makers as Robert H. Towers, SCAPA Crafts and Fraser Anderson. And there is a robust market for them among antique dealers.
I like them, particularly the hooded version, because they combine joinery with lipwork, where complete chairs would be made of woven straw.
The V&A’s furniture exhibit currently has three of Kirkness’s chairs on display and they are delightful. As always, it’s much different seeing an object in person than on a flat screen.
If I’m granted another lifetime, one of the things I’d like to do is to create audio tours of museums designed for furniture makers.
Yesterday, Lucy and I spent several hours in the British Museum, and I kept thinking: “Dang it, I don’t want to see any more sculptures of battles or boobies. Show me people working.”
If you look close, there’s a wealth of information on furniture, tools and craft in general in almost every room. You just have to look with care and at the right things. For example, instead of looking at the mummies in the display case, check out the corner joinery on the box that held the mummy. Is that a nailed butt joint or something else?
In the Greek sculpture section, you can skip the people reclining with a jug of wine and instead check out the klismos chairs (shown above). These early chairs look insanely contemporary with their curved legs and (in some images) curved backs. The design of this chair rears its head every time classicism makes a comeback in the decorative arts. During the last few thousand years, furniture makers have made the curved legs in a variety of ways – cutting them from solid, steambending and bent laminations. I wonder how the originals were made?
Exhibits of Roman artifacts (every European town has them) always display a wealth of tools and nails. The British Museum calls out this tool as a drawknife used for making barrel staves. They could be right. I think it looks like a scorp, which could be used for hollowing out many objects, including bowls and chair seats.
Even the religious stuff can have woodworking undertones. These small bronze bowsaws (about the side of a quarter) were left as a votive offering at early Christian churches during Roman times. I love how these slightly stylized representations of bowsaws even show which way the teeth cut.
After I finish making audio tours of all the world’s museums, then I’ll compile a book of all the best woodworking scenes in literature. And a film of all the best woodworking parts in movies.
The most important thing the bench does for you is hold a job whilst you work on it. (I remember my early days without a bench, struggling to hold work with one hand whilst cutting with the other. I am amazed I came out without more damage to my digits. The opportunity to saw off part or all of my hand was a daily event.) The bench is just a giant, flat holding device that allows you to get into the correct position to do the work properly. You are then free to concentrate on balance and being in control. That’s what matters – control.
There are a few things a cabinetmaker’s bench has to be. It has to be heavy. You will be exerting horizontal and vertical forces on it, and you don’t want it moving around – so spend some money on timber and make it heavy.
The bench is just a giant, flat holding device that allows you to get into the correct position to do the work properly. You are then free to concentrate on balance and being in control. PHOTO: WR PHOTOGRAPHY
Make your bench to suit your height. This is critical. Many benches I see are very low. The bench height we suggest has rewarded us with strong, undamaged backs. It’s a high bench surface set up for general planing. To determine the right height for you, stand alongside a bench. Bend your elbow. Extend the forefinger and thumb of your left hand. Touch your thumb to your elbow. The point of the forefinger is where your benchtop should be. This will do for almost all work. In case you do need to get on top of a job, keep a small “hop-up box” stored beneath the front rail.
The bench has to have tool well. This is the place to gather the tools in use for a given project. The working surface of the bench should be kept as clear as possible at all times. The benchtop is for the job at hand – nothing else. We know that this game is about skill with speed, and speed is about organisation and picking up and putting down tools fast. Thinking ahead, not being slowed down by a lost chisel in a pile of shavings, is key. We go nuts about such professional practice at Rowden. At the end of day, we put tools away sharp. I know you are tired, but sharpen your tools, sweep the benchtop, sweep the floor – then go home.
Kentucky turkey-wing bench brush.
Benchtops need to be swept down regularly to keep them free of dust and shavings. Christopher Schwarz sent me this brush as a memento of our visit to Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill. Just look at the design and workmanship! The ends of the bristles thin down to fine strands, and at the bottom they form not a straight line but a gentle arc. Perfect for this job. Look at the binding wrapping elegantly in groups of three, then a gap, gathering more with the movement of each group of three down the handle. At the base, the full handle is bound with an inexplicable hanging hook, coming from the centre of the binding. How did they do that? This, Chris calls a Turkey Wing, I call it the best bench brush ever to have been made.
A clean, well-lighted place.
You can go a long way with great bench, a bag of good, sharp hand tools and good bench light. As my eyes have dimmed, the number of bench lights I need has increased – but you will likely need only one, a good one that can be moved around all over the place.
Workbench elevation.
Workbench Plan.
Workbench Profile.
The tool well collects everything from shavings to dust, tea mugs to half-eaten sandwiches. That’s what it’s for. The bench surface is golden territory – keep it clear and clean; do it no damage. When making this surface, you will respond to the timber that you actually have available. But don’t be tempted to make the bench surface too wide. You need to keep this surface flat, and if it’s very wide, you will need very long arms to flatten it…and the task will be tiresome and not done as regularly as it should. There will come times, usually when developing third-scale prototypes, that you use this bench surface as a datum reference surface – so it’s important to keep it spot on. Our practice is that at the end of every big job, the surface is dressed lightly with a bench plane. Just a shaving all over gets it clean, flat and new – ready for the next job.
