I stumbled across these chairs for sale via Leland Little yesterday, and it was like encountering a beautiful train wreck. I couldn’t stop looking at them.
On the one hand, they nailed all the angles. But on the other hand, white naugahyde.
The only information Leland Little offers is they are “circa 1950” and they are “American.” Yet another thing the world can be angry with us about.
— Christopher Schwarz
For at least the 12th time this month I’ve looked at the work on my bench and found that the odder it looks, the better.
I’m building a near-replica of a chair on display at St Fagans National Museum of History, and replica work is not usually my bag (or it hasn’t been for a long, long time). At every turn, this chair does the opposite of what I would do if it were my design. But I vowed to stick as close to the original as possible.
Why am I doing this? To attempt get inside the head of the original Welsh maker and perhaps learn something.
Why this chair? A drawing of it appears on the cover of John Brown’s “Welsh Stick Chairs,” and so he must have also seen something special in this chair. I adore it, too, but exactly why I like it is difficult to explain.
I began by making full-size drawings of the chair based on the photos I took during my visit to St Fagans with Christopher Williams. Even from the drawings, I knew this would be an odd ride.
The Undercarriage
The seat is unusual by modern standards. Though it’s about 22” wide, it’s only about 13” deep. It’s quite thin, unlike some of the chunky seats you see on many Welsh and Windsor chairs (up to 2” thick). The legs are delicate – just 1-5/16” at the floor – and they taper up to the seat.
The seat’s shape defies classification. It’s like a D-shaped seat that has been stretched with a rolling pin. There’s a big flat area where the four back sticks reside.
The original chair once had stretchers (now long gone) that ran between the front and back legs. It might have had a medial stretcher, but perhaps not. On this version, I’m building the chair as it appears now, without stretchers.
One change I have made to my chair is to lightly saddle the seat. The original seat is as flat as a board. (My saddle shape is based on other chairs from St Fagans.)
The Sticks & Armbow
The sticks on this chair are about 5/8” and don’t taper much, if at all. But it’s the armbow that has caused me the most head-scratching. The original’s arms are likely made from a curved branch. Then the two pieces that make the arm were joined by a large half-lap joint.
I wasn’t able to find a branch that works for this chair. So I made an arm with a plank that had some curved grain, but it looked like crap. So I switched gears and tried to make one from compression wood (aka cold-bend hardwood). Fail. So I made two arms using bent laminations. One was a total fail (my fault), and the second was a partial fail. Plus I didn’t like the way they looked in the end – too modern.
So I went to a sawmill in the country and dug through the 8/4 oak to look for a more suitable board. I found one with lots of curve. So last week I finally got an armbow that looked right. Well, “looked right” is not right. The armbow looks like an exaggerated harp, which matches the seat shape. As a result, the angles for four of the sticks were totally wack-doodle. But the wronger it felt, the righter the whole thing looked.
The Crest
The crest (sometimes called the comb) was the most difficult shape to reproduce. It is composed of multiple tapering curves. After drawing and drawing, I had to put down the pencil and just grab a rasp to make it look right.
Bemused by the whole experience, I knocked the finished crest in place and walked away to the machine room to put something away. When I returned, I caught the silhouette of my chair out of the corner of my eye and felt the same pang when I saw the original at St Fagans.
It’s then that I saw something I hadn’t seen before. Unlike many Welsh chairs, this one has a lightness and femininity that many Welsh chairs eschew. It’s not a passive chair by any means (sometimes femininity is wrongly equated with passiveness). It still looks like it wants to bite your shin if you mistreat it. But it works. And now I know exactly why.
— Christopher Schwarz
It’s no secret that Brendan Gaffney and I are obsessed with the life and work of Chester Cornett, a traditional Eastern Kentucky chairmaker who pushed into the world of art with his later chairs he built mostly in Cincinnati.
While Brendan and I have been studying his chairs for some time, we both have developed an odd affection for the hand-painted sign Chester had outside his workshop. The sign is made of bits of thin sheet metal that have been screwed or riveted together. The letters are orange (Brendan found a color photo that has the sign in the background).
If you don’t speak Kentucky, here’s what the sign says:
Handmade Furniture
Maker Of The
Cornett Chairs
We Make Anything
Or It Can’t Be Made
I love the misspellings. “Funiture?” “Chaires?” “Iney Thin?”
Brendan and I have been plotting to make a sign like this for our shop. Today we made a prototype using hardboard, grey primer and orange paint from the home center. After studying photos of the sign, I decided the letters were 5” high and determined the width and height of the sign based on that.
We bought an inexpensive stencil set and stencil brushes from the home center. Then we went to work. The entire project took about an hour.
We’ll hang this sign in storefront’s library. And now I’m going to find some used sheet metal so we can make the real thing. The metal sign will hang in the garden where it will age with the help of the elements.
This is one of the benefits of being unemployed.
— Christopher Schwarz
Note: All three items have sold. Thanks for your interest in my work!
I have one of my staked armchairs finished and ready to ship anywhere in the contiguous United States.
The chair is made using red oak and is finished with organic linseed oil, beeswax and a burnishing process I’ve been experimenting with for the last year. The seat and chair’s back are configured for general use by a sitter of a typical height.
The joinery is designed for many decades of hard use. The legs feature conical tenons that are wedged into the seat and only tighten with use. All the joints are assembled with hide glue, so if a repair is ever necessary, the broken part can be easily removed, repaired and replaced.
It is the most comfortable chair form I make. I can sit in it for hours without complaint.
The price is $850 plus actual shipping costs via LTL common carrier. I am happy to deliver it anywhere within a 100-mile radius of Cincinnati for no charge.
Also, if you would like an Argentinian sheepskin (which is a fantastic cushion), I can include one for $30 (my actual cost).
Drop me a line through my website if you are interested.
2 Staked High Stools
I usually only sell these stools here at the storefront, but they are stacking up as of late because I’ve been making them for classes, a book and demonstrations. The stools are made from Southern yellow pine and are finished with an oil/varnish blend.
These stools are great for the shop. You can sit on either side of the seat. When you sit inclined toward the floor with your feet on the floor, it places your head and hands directly over your work. If you turn the stool around and sit on the other side, you sit upright with your feet on the cross-stretcher.
I have two stools available: One is 23” from the floor (on its high side); the other is 21” off the floor (also from the high side). The stools are $150 each.
Of course, the best deal here is to pick them up at the storefront. But I’d be willing to discuss shipping them in the lower 48 or delivering them. I caution you that packing and shipping these stools can be expensive.
Again, drop me a line through my website if you are interested.
A Note on Prices
If you are interested in sharing your opinion on my prices, I suggest WoodNet or Lumberjocks, and not the comments.
— Christopher Schwarz
Brendan’s video demonstrating his “chairmaker’s sighting square” was a bit of a joke. But the square itself is something we use all the time in the shop when drilling tricky angles.
You don’t have to build one of these squares – an aluminum framing square works just as well – but the wooden ones are nice. Here’s how the square works.
First the driller places the bit on the crest rail and lines up the drill with the hole locations on the crest and the seat (totally by eye). The driller can easily see if he (or she) is tilted too far left or right. But he can’t see if he’s tilted too far forward or back. This is where the sighting square comes in handy.
Place the sighting square on the crest with one of its legs in line with the drill and the bit (shown above). The “boring buddy” then sits at the other end of the square – basically, 90° to the axis of drilling.
Then the boring buddy holds up the sighting square, lining up the point of the drill bit with the hole location in the seat and one leg of the square. She can easily see if the driller needs to lean forward or backward to achieve the correct angle.
Works every time (as long as the boring buddy isn’t blind).
— Christopher Schwarz