Our youngest daughter graduates from high school in May and, if all goes as planned, Lucy and I will move house in July. From the leafy streets of Fort Mitchell, Ky., to the two floors above our storefront in Covington.
That’s not a lot of time. Not only do we have to fix up the living space in Covington, we have to get our house in Fort Mitchell ready to sell. As a result, I’m dedicating every Sunday possible to carpentry, painting and generally divesting us of accumulating stuff during 22 years in one place.
I won’t be blogging about this stuff much – I know you are here for woodworking, and I am, too. But as a result of this work, you might hear less from me on the blog and more from our other contributors (and a huge cheer went up in the land).
Just a reminder that you’re invited to Christian Becksvoort’s “Shaker Inspiration” book release party on Jan. 12, from 7-10 p.m. – plus he’ll be in and out during the Lost Art Press open house that day (10 a.m-5 p.m.).
Christian will give a presentation on his work and a short reading from his new book (and sign copies of it and his other books if you like); we’ll have snacks, beer and wine, and non-alcoholic beverage choices).
If you plan to attend the evening shindig, please send me an email at covingtonmechanicals@gmail.com to let me know how many are in your party (so we don’t run out of provisions).
Yes, my darlings, we will have a prize for the best entry submitted for this Caption Challenge.
Sharpen your wits and enter** as many times as you wish. The Challenge ends on January 1, 2019 at 1500 hours in my time zone (North America EST).
I will select the winner and the two-pronged prize is a Lost Art Press bandana and a Chester Cornett button (pictured below) and Chris Schwarz will send these anywhere in the world.
Probably the first record of a back chair is in the manuscript of the laws of Hywel Dda (Howell the Good), a 10th century Welsh king. The surviving document, inscribed in the middle of the 12th century, has an illustration of a judge sitting on what is clearly a back or stick chair.
The history of the English chair since about 1800 is well recorded. The first chair factories with division of labour were working during the Napoleonic Wars. There are no such records of the early Welsh chairs, or the late ones for that matter. The stick chair on this side of the Atlantic is a peasants’ chair, of little value, and therefore not worth recording. Welsh stick chairs were not built by chair-makers, but almost certainly were the work of the village carpenter, wheelwright or coffin-maker. A house would be built by a group of people from the area, men of various skills who could afford the time. They were not builders as such. The trades were for the important things in life, the blacksmith and the wheelwright for agriculture. Household wares, such as furniture, were the luxuries of life which came after the provision of food. People had to do several things. A farmer might be a good hand at plastering, or the blacksmith’s wife made candles. Furniture was made by men who were handy with tools. We see only the best of it, poorly made pieces have long since fallen apart. Many of the implements used on the farm had components of wood: plough beams, harrows, wheelbarrows, sleds and gates, and for economic reasons a good proportion of these would have been user-made.
Tracing the provenance of individual country chairs is a complicated business, probably with few exceptions, impossible. There is no scholarly standard work to refer to. Chairs with similar characteristics are found in different parts of the country (Plate 14). They cannot, with any certainty, be regionalised. Carmarthenshire, with large areas of good farming land and a high proportion of better houses, is known for the quality and elegance of its locally-built furniture. Chairs found in the county, whilst unmistakably Welsh, have a greater sophistication than those made in the more remote parts further north (Plate 20). Dating Welsh stick chairs is very difficult. Whether these Carmarthenshire chairs were made concurrently with their more ‘folk art’ cousins from further north is difficult to say, but it looks as though they might have been. There is the possibility of another regional style. Some Welsh chairs have a wide lozenge- shaped seat, with only three or four untapered, heavier long sticks at the back. This type appears to come from the north (Plate 8, a & c).
As the standard of living improved, throughout Wales primitive furniture and chairs were made. By whom and for whom it is difficult to say. For certain, these items did not find their way into the squire’s house and they were almost entirely rural. The one thing about the chairs is that they all fulfilled the strict definition of ‘Windsor’, in that they grew from a solid wooden seat, having legs and sticks socketed into that seat. The termination of the long back sticks was normally a comb, that is a piece of wood, sometimes curved, sometimes straight, into which the tops of the sticks were mortised. Rarely, a few later chairs have a steamed bow or hoop (Plates 16 & 20). Many of the chairs terminated at the arm, that is the rear sticks did not come up to the level of shoulders or head. These arm-chairs, quite common, are the forerunner of the smoker’s bow or captain’s chair (Plate 14).
What is it that makes these chairs so attractive that now they have become highly sought after collectors’ items? Could it be some extension of the old Celtic art which makes them so appealing? – a naive folk art uncluttered by association with the contemporary urban styles. Many characteristics of the design are extremely good, and represent what we look for today in a well proportioned chair.
Hey, we never put our books on sale. But we have several hundred T-shirts that were dwelling in our cellar that we need to clear out. These are leftovers from Handworks and are of excellent quality.
The shirts are 100 percent cotton American Apparel shirts. Made in Los Angeles and printed in Kentucky and Indiana. We are selling them for $17 plus $5 shipping anywhere in the United States (sorry these ship only in the U.S.). Basically, these are at cost, plus what it costs to box them and ship them. Quantities are limited, so don’t dawdle.
The fastest way to see the shirts is to go to the Apparel page of our site via this link.