I have been stuck in a little too deep on peasant furniture and have forgotten to announce this: I am presenting at Colonial Williamsburg’s 26th annual “Working Wood in the 18th Century” conference Jan. 25-28.
This year’s theme is “By the Book,” and it will focus on the relationship between the printed word and woodworking. I was asked to give a presentation on the history of woodworking books (one of my favorite topics), and I’ll also do a demonstration on using M. Hulot’s workbench for chairmaking operations.
Hulot’s bench is so ubiquitous among chairmakers that even Chester Cornett in Eastern Kentucky worked on one. And it is still used today.
Also Lost Art Press-related, Whitney B. Miller, author of “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed” will present a talk on Henry Boyd and the development of his life story into a children’s book.
Of course, the conference schedule is packed with demonstrations by top-notch woodworkers and carpenters, and I am excited to be able to sit in on many of the presentations. Check out the list here. I’m particularly excited to see Harold Caldwell, Mary Herbert and Shelby Christensen’s presentation on Joseph Moxon’s techniques in his section on carpentry.
In-person registration for the event closes tomorrow at midnight. So make a decision in the clutch and make the trip if you can. Register here.
If you register or already registered, please leave a comment below. If there are enough Lost Art Press readers going, perhaps we can organize a happy hour or a meet-up during the conference.
I hope to see you there. This is my first visit to Colonial Williamsburg (really!), so be gentle.
Chris Williams grew up in a typical, conservative Welsh family (his words). His mother was a homemaker; his father, a tax inspector. He has one sister.
Although his parents weren’t craftspeople, Chris’s lineage includes shoemakers, cabinetmakers and joiners. Thomas Jenkins, born 1813 and a distant great-grandfather to Chris, is famous, locally. Jenkins kept a daily diary, which has been published as a book: “Selections from the Diary of Thomas Jenkins (1826-1870),” edited by D.C. Jenkins (Dragon Books, Bala, North Wales, 1986; republished by Historia Wales, 2012).
Jenkins was curious and loved to learn – in 1843 he founded the Llandeilo Mechanics’ Mutual Instructing Institution, which met at his house. He built boats, a bridge, violins (which he learned how to play) and more than 250 coffins. He collected fossils, explored caves and conducted science experiments. A lover of astronomy, Chris says Jenkins found work installing sundials in the yards of the big country homes that dotted the landscape. According to the editor’s introduction in the book, Jenkins also erected public lighting, brought gas and water to his town, was involved in mining, beer brewing and census enumerating, fathered 12 children and was named a constable of the Lee Court. He walked everywhere, and later in life built “a homomotive carriage with three wheels.”
“He was an amazing man,” Chris says.
A recent picture Chris took of the Wales countryside (Black Mountains, 2017)
Chris enjoyed a childhood spent playing in the countryside with friends, climbing trees and building dens.
“I didn’t like school, particularly,” Chris says. “I wasn’t an academic, for sure. I enjoyed woodwork, metalwork, technical drawing.”
Chris spent as much time as he could in the school’s woodshop. It was the mid-1980s, and he says the woodshop had an old-fashioned feel to it, starkly different from the clinical and sterile white cabinets and Formica worktops of the school workshops he sees today.
“Our woodshop was a proper workshop, with bloody wooden benches and tools and timber,” he says. “It was what I think a proper workshop should look like.”
His school’s career officer, having noted the amount of time Chris spent in the school’s woodshop, recommended a carpentry/joinery apprenticeship.
“I went home and told my parents and they said, ‘Yeah, fine,’” Chris says. “My parents had no aspirations for me at all. It’s different, the way I bring my kids up. We’re really keen on their education. Not overly pushy, but we’re very aware of it. If they’re behind and not doing it, we try to explain why they need to do it. I didn’t really have any of that. They were good parents, but I think it probably would have helped me if they had possibly encouraged me a bit more academically.”
Chris’s apprenticeship was with the local council, maintaining council offices, farms and schools – anything council-owned. Most of the buildings were big, old, beautiful Georgian properties, which Chris enjoyed.
Chris’s foreman was in his late 50s. “He was really good,” Chris says. “He was extremely knowledgeable.” Chris surmised his foreman did his apprenticeship shortly after WWII. The area, then, was quite rural. “His apprenticeship would have been really quite primitive,” Chris says. “Very few machines. They had a wheelwright’s shop and there was an undertaker’s shop there as well. So it harkened back to a really old Wales.”
It took awhile for Chris and his foreman to come to terms with each other. “I don’t think he really liked me at first, but we seemed to hit it off later,” Chris says. “I wasn’t cocky, but I liked to laugh and joke, and he was more serious.”
Chris earned his City & Guilds qualification and began working at a young age self-employed. “It was ridiculous to start at that age,” he says. “My parents separated, and it was a funny time for me. I can’t say I was lost, but I didn’t quite know where I was going, really.”
Chris can point to two things that jumpstarted his furniture making. First, his fondness for “simple country furniture” began with a book he found in his technical school’s library – “Furniture Making Plain and Simple” by Aldren A. Watson. He was 16. And then, at around 19, after earning his qualifications, he befriended a carpenter, who always made his own furniture. “He’s a really clever guy,” Chris says. “He’s a lot older than me and he lived near me. And I’d always call on him and see what he was making.”
Chris’s first piece was a settle – a bench with arms and a seat that opened up. “It was the first thing I ever made for myself on my own,” he says. “I just went for it.”
Nobody taught him – but he realized furniture making, carpentry and joinery all carried similar principles. “If you’re interested, you just soak it all up,” he says. “That’s what I believe. I’m genuinely one of these people that if I really wanted to learn how to do something, I’ll put everything into it.”
A Kitchen Workshop
Chris was young, and living with his mother. The only machine he owned was a lathe, which he kept in a small outbuilding in the garden. His mother would often come home from work only to find Chris building 10’-long oak gates on the kitchen table. He was also interested in blacksmithing – he would heat things using the fire inside and then walk the fiery item, with tongs, through the living room to then work on it outside.
“I realized there was a chance of burning the house down so I thought I better not carry on with that,” he says.
A chair at St Fagans National Museum of History
By this time Chris had heard about “a mythical chairmaker … [who] made chairs by hand without the aid of electricity and lived in his workshop.” (You can read more about that meeting here.) Chris was also visiting St Fagans National Museum of History regularly, and while he noticed the chairs there, he didn’t pay close attention.
“At that point I didn’t really know what I was looking at,” he says. “And lots of people didn’t really know, either. John coined the phrase ‘Welsh stick chairs.’ People will dispute that, but he did.”
With some research, Chris discovered this mythical chairmaker had written a book – “Welsh Stick Chairs.” He drove to Newport, Pembrokeshire, to buy a copy. John Brown, who was dropping off more books to sell, held the door open for him. Chris had no idea.
Chris says the book was a “revelation,” and at age 21 he made his first chair, in his mother’s kitchen, on a Black & Decker workmate.
“It’s terrible,” he says. He still owns it.
Chris accepted work as he could find it. He sold his first settle, and then another. He continued making simple furniture – anything he could fit in his mother’s kitchen.
A couple years later he began renting space in an old farm building. Aside from the lathe, he had no machines – he couldn’t afford them. If he needed something planed, he would go to his friend’s joinery shop and use the machines there. He worked like this for a couple years.
And then Chris’s partner, Claire, wanted to travel. Her contract job as a research scientist ended. So she came home and said to Chris, “I’m going traveling.” Chris decided to go with her.
The flight, an open-ended, around-the-world-type ticket, was expensive. “I never earned a lot of money,” Chris says. “I generally mean that. You’d be shocked if you realized how little I earned.”
So, Chris made three chairs. Then he put them in his van and drove them around to people he knew, friends and past clients, to see if they were interested in buying one.
“Within a week I had sold the three chairs, and I had the money for the ticket,” he says. “I was really pleased that people had faith in me to buy these chairs. I wasn’t really known for making them at that point.”
Chris and Claire travelled extensively – to Australia, New Zealand and the Cook Islands. While in Melbourne, Chris picked up a copy of the November/December 1997 issue of Fine Woodworking – in it was an article about John Brown. The article included a picture of John Brown’s workshop, with daffodils coming out of the hedgerows. (The daffodil is the national symbol of Wales. On St. David’s Day, everyone wears a daffodil on their lapel.)
“I thought, I just want to go home,” Chris says.
Meeting John Brown
Chris doesn’t buy woodworking magazines. Or books. “I find them quite unsettling because I’m not the most confident person,” he says. “When I read other ways of doing things I always wonder, ‘Am I doing it right?’”
But he did buy all the copies of Good Woodworking that featured John Brown as a columnist.
Once back in Wales, Chris and Claire bought a house. Determined to meet John Brown, Chris pulled out a phone book. While all the names listed included a last name and first initial, John Brown’s name was different – it was listed in full: John Brown.
“I just rung him up,” Chris says. “And he answered the phone, and I was kind of really nervous and he answered the phone and he went JOHN BROWN, like that. And I kind of had a mild panic attack, and I started mumbling because it’s weird talking to somebody who you’ve put up on this huge pedestal, isn’t it, really?”
Chris explained who he was – he said he had made some chairs and wanted to be a chairmaker. He asked John Brown if he could visit. John Brown said yes.
“I drove down, and I eventually found him and I knocked at the door,” Chris says. “Where he lived was very remote, very difficult to find. Typical John.”
John Brown was a bit gruff when he opened the door, but Chris soon realized it was because he was in the middle of gluing up a chair.
Chris watched him, while also taking in the space – rustic (a word John Brown would hate, Chris says, but one that properly defined the space) and simple, with hand tools, art, quotes from the likes of John Ruskin and poetry – some of which was carved into the walls.
“It was just totally different,” Chris says. “A totally different way of life.”
After the glue-up was complete, John Brown made a pot of tea. The two drank tea and talked. And then John Brown made another pot of tea.
“Obviously we got along,” Chris says.
Throughout it all, though, Chris was feeling self-conscious.
“I had a baseball hat on as a result of a few too many drinks one night,” Chris says. “I was staying with friends in Auckland, and they decided it would be funny if I peroxide blond-ed my hair.” He laughs. “I was rip drunk. And I said, ‘Yeah! Whatever!’ It went wrong and I looked like a carrot. So they had to do it again and I can remember my scalp burning. So I had this bizarre look – dark eyebrows and a kind of yellow hair. It was ridiculous. So I had a hat on and I could see him looking at my hat, thinking, ‘When is he going to take it off?’”
Weeks later, Chris told John Brown the story. John Brown laughed.
A 10-year Partnership
Chris first contacted Lost Art Press out of anger and loyalty to John Brown.
“I felt that people were missing the point sometimes about John Brown and there was a lot of misinformation,” he says.
Chris S. had recently pulled his public email address, so Chris W. had to be creative in reaching him. But the two connected, and a partnership – and friendship – formed.
Chris Williams teaching at Lost Art Press, May 2018
Fast forward to May of this year, in the Lost Art Press library. Chris W. had just finished his first week-long chairmaking class. Several students were finishing up and Chris would stop, periodically, to offer warm goodbyes. He sat in Chris S.’s dugout chair and told the story of his life in a booming, but not overbearing, voice, complemented with heavy laughter. When he quoted John Brown his voice dropped low, each syllable weighted heavily, bringing life to the mythical chairmaker from Wales.
Chris W. spent the next hour in this chair talking about his relationship with John Brown. But this is a profile about Chris, not about John Brown. And those aren’t my stories to tell. Those are Chris’s stories, and they are the backbone of a book that has been years in the making.
Some teasers: a meeting at Axminster; a move to Llandovery; Vaughn Williams’s “The Lark Ascending”; tea; a test; a partnership; a friendship; a gallery; a trip to Exempla in Munich; an intense argument (involving, of all things, a restaurant bill and flatulence); an apology; a life change; a move to Carmarthen.
When John Brown retired from chairmaking, to study art, he gave Chris all his chair templates and offcuts. Chris bought some of his tools and helped him move to an apartment, an old Georgian with a big box sash window overlooking the Tywi Valley.
Chris went back to his old rented space at the farm and continued making chairs. A few years later the farmer, who had become a dear friend, died.
“I had to move out,” Chris says. “I wanted to because I couldn’t bear being there without him. He was the loveliest guy.”
Chris began working out of his home’s garage, but found there were too many distractions. The recession hit, and Chris’s chairmaking customers dwindled. He threw himself into general woodwork, but then his arms, overworked, failed him – tennis elbow in one, golfer’s elbow in the other, and recurring tendonitis in both forearms.
“My hands were bright red and blue,” he says. “I could barely hold a cup of tea it was so painful.”
John Brown died in 2008.
A Surprise Twist: Furniture Conservation
Chris visited a local furniture restorer, Hugh Haley, owner of Phoenix Conservation. Hugh knew Chris was a bit in limbo in terms of work, health and a shop, so Hugh asked Chris if he wanted to move his shop to Phoenix, where he could make chairs. “And if you like what I do, you can perhaps help me a bit,” Hugh told Chris. “Brilliant,” said Chris.
Within two months Hugh was diagnosed with cancer. Chris immediately offered to help.
“It’s woodworking, but it’s different,” Chris says about furniture restoration. Hugh had a lot of work coming in that he could not handle. So Chris began doing the work for him. Hugh lived behind his workshop, and whenever Chris had trouble he’d either take the item or a picture back to Hugh, who would then explain to Chris what he needed to do. In time and after two surgeries, Hugh recuperated. And today, while Chris still builds chairs, he continues to restore furniture for Hugh.
“I’m so grateful because it’s another new world, another new skill I’ve learned,” he says. Much of the work they do is for museums and historic houses. “So we get to work in some of the most amazing houses,” Chris says. “It’s incredible.”
One of Chris’s finished chairs, April 2018
Chris makes about a dozen chairs a year. “I don’t actively want lots of chair orders,” he says. “I like making them, but I’ve got to be in the right mood or want to make one. When I’ve done weeks of fiddling with old wood and it’s messy and this and that, it’s quite nice to work with new, fresh timber.”
Chris and Hugh keep a large stash of old furniture parts for the wood, mahogany and pine from the 1700s. That way, if Chris needs to make, say, a new drawer side for an antique piece of furniture, he can use the same type of wood from the same period in which it was made.
“You can see where the guy before me has cut dovetails,” he says. “I hate cutting them in a way but you’ve got to recycle the wood because it’s the same wood, it’s the same color, it’s the same era. … I love looking at them and taking them apart. It’s interesting. It’s really nice, you feel very – not attached – but when you’re repairing furniture, you’re seeing everything. You’re seeing the faults, you’re seeing why that has fallen apart and that’s quite good in making new furniture. You think, ‘Well, don’t do it like that because that’s why it’s failed.’ … And it’s wonderful when you come across a maker’s mark on a drawer bottom where somebody has written in pencil who they are and what year. That’s lovely when you see that. It’s really nice. I like that kind of thing, to know where it’s come from.”
Forging a Future of His Own
Chris and Claire have four children, ages 15, 13, 11 and 7. “I’m not an expert on being a father,” he says. “It’s hard. You’ve got five people living with you, with five different opinions.”
The children are involved in sports – football, rugby and swimming. Once Chris is home from work, he and Claire split the tasks, shuttling the kids back and forth from school and activities, taking turns cooking, loading the dishwasher and switching out laundry. It’s wearing but Chris says, worth it.
Exterior of Chris and Hugh’s shop.
The interior of Chris’s shop, as he was setting it up in June.
Chris maintains normal working hours – typically 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. And lately he’s been thinking more about teaching. He’ll be back in the states next May to teach another chairmaking course. And Hugh has suggested that Chris teach some classes at Phoenix.
His first chairmaking course at Lost Art Press was also the first class he’s ever taught – and he was nervous. He thought he might hate it, or not excel, or even, be good at it.
“I think the consensus was that everybody had a really good time and it went well so that’s encouraging,” he says. “I’ve had some constructive criticism from students, and they’re right about what they said.”
And here, much like an axe splitting through wood, it’s clear Chris has chosen his own path. John Brown has influenced Chris’s life immeasurably, but Chris is not John Brown.
“John would come out with Zen-like phases, he was very philosophical,” Chris says. “And he used to say to me, ‘think round.’ When you’ve got this thing in front of you and you’re constantly turning it while you’re shaping it, it’s almost like a dance. You turn it, plane, turn it, plane, and you’re thinking round. And I know everyone [in the chairmaking class] thought it was hilarious, but it means something. You get that into your head as you’re doing it, and it does work. I think that’s always stuck with me. I’m not trying, pretending, to be John Brown. I could never do it and I don’t want to do it. But that is one of those things that has always stuck with me. Until coming here, I never knew I would say that. Obviously, it’s tickled a lot of people.”
Whereas John Brown often dealt with people awkwardly, Chris says, Chris enjoys being around people. He appreciates conversation (with people he likes) and loud laughter. He’s opinionated but compassionate. Professionally, he exudes calmness, encouraging his students to “be in the zone.” He uses phrases such as “be at one with the plane.” He regularly told students that it’s OK if their chair doesn’t look like his chair – that that’s good, even. And if they go home and make another chair using different methods? Fine.
“Put your own take on it,” he regularly told the class. “The form will still look fundamentally the same.”
An example: Chris sands away his tool marks, preferring a smooth surface. But he recognizes that many makers prefer to leave tool marks, including chairmaker Peter Galbert.
Whereas many folks find a comfortable spot on that horizontal axis, Chris recognizes the importance of growth, of riding that curve, both as a maker and a human being.
“I think I’m always kind of open to new things, and I kind of run with it then,” he says. “And you meet interesting people, like I met Hugh. He’s just really eccentric, very similar to John but in a different way. I seem to be drawn to this type of person. I’m not consciously doing it. I do pride myself in having friends who are quite poor to friends who are quite rich. I don’t care who you are, what color you are, gay, bloody whatever. If I like you, I like you.”
That said, he doesn’t force friendships. “You can’t consciously do that,” he says. “But I do try and see the best in people if I can. Or, I’m trying to see that more.”
Chris recently failed a mindfulness course.
Actually, “fail” is the wrong word. Because despite what he calls the “macho-made environment” sometimes prevalent in his circles, he recognized the need to be more present in the moment. So, he signed up for a class.
“I’m sitting there with my teacher – she was lovely, we got along really great – and she taps this bell and then you’ve got to get in the zone. And I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, ‘Well, right after this I’m going to make a set of sticks and I’m going to glue this or that …’ and that’s no good. I couldn’t switch it off. And we tried for weeks. In the end, I just said, ‘I can’t do it. I can’t switch off.’ And she said, ‘Chris, it’s fine.’”
But he did take something away from it.
“I try to live more in the now,” he says. “That’s one thing I have learned. It’s hard. You can’t change the past. It’s happened. You can’t go back. And you can’t try to think too far ahead. Try to think smaller, you know? It’s hard.”
Perhaps, but Chris also manages to immerse himself in the moment better than most – it happens any time he hears his own music while thinking round.
“It sounds romantic but I honestly mean this,” he says. “Whenever it’s cold out, in the winter, and you drive to work in your car, it’s always lovely walking into the workshop, which is warm. We used to use a lot of pine and I can smell it now. Even when I smell this certain pine at home, it’s really nostalgic. It’s quite bizarre. And I always felt a kind of comfort that you were in a warm place and you were in a place that you enjoyed being. And I still feel like that sometimes. If I’ve done a particularly nice job with what I’m doing I feel – ah, I’m being paid to do this – which is really special, you know? But I’d be lying if, probably at least once a week I think, ‘What am I doing? I need to get a proper job.’ But even if I won the lottery or inherited millions I wouldn’t change anything. I’d just do what I wanted to do and not worry about finding customers.”
Of course, it’s very likely that customers would find him.
Editor’s note: The third edition of “Cut & Dried” should arrive in February. You can sign up to be notified when it arrives here. In this post, author Richard Jones explains his update to Chapter 6.
Rombald’s Moor: The opening image to Chapter 6.
In 2021, I decided I ought to update “Cut & Dried,” and the third reprint of it at the end of 2024 was a good opportunity to do so. For a long time I had been aware of two ways to determine wood moisture content, i.e., the “dry basis” (db) and the “wet basis” (wb). In Section 6.6 Measuring Wood Moisture Content in the already printed book, I emphasised we woodworkers use only wood’s dry weight as the base weight to assess wood moisture content. This dry basis methodology wasn’t actually named in the book and nor was the alternative wet basis methodology named or described except the wet basis was hinted at in an exchange I had with a furniture student at the end of page 76 and into page 77.
However, since the last printing of “Cut & Dried” in 2019, things have evolved and environmental issues are ever more pressing. The drive is on to reduce carbon emissions, reduce particulates and pollutants etc. I am not here to proselytise on these issues but burning biomass fuel in the form of logs, wood chips, pellets etc. is one potential source of particulates and pollution. Many people and organisations around the world burn biomass fuel for heating homes, cooking, industrial boilers etc., and burning wet fuel is both inefficient and pollutant. The U.K. government, for example, created legislation to regulate the supply of biomass fuel, including setting the maximum moisture content levels for biomass fuel suppliers, and putting in place organisations to verify that such suppliers meet required government standards.
Crucially the authorised method of determining wood moisture content in the biomass fuel sector is the wet basis. It’s the case that the biomass fuel sector might be considered peripheral to us woodworkers with our focus on making things out of wood, and where we want to know its moisture content, but the biomass fuel sector, like use, require felled trees, so there is an environmental impact which deserves some discussion in “Cut & Dried.”
To illustrate the difference between dry basis and wet basis calculations for wood moisture content I’m including some text from the latest iteration of section 6.6 of “Cut & Dried,” but modified slightly for this blog post’s purposes.
A learner approached me with the following figures for a piece of wood both before and after oven-drying:
Wet Weight = 20 grammes
Oven-Dry Weight = 15 grammes
This learner questioned the calculated moisture content result. Using the formula already provided she calculated: ((20 – 15) / 15) X 100 = 33.3%MCdb. This learner, in trying to grasp the basis of the calculation, changed the formula to calculate thus: ((WW – ODW) / WW) X 100 giving the sum ((20 – 15) / 20) X 100 = 25%wb. We discussed the different results, i.e., 33.3 percent and 25 percent, and it is easy to mentally visualise a 5 gramme weight loss is a quarter of the 20 gramme wet weight of the sample, i.e., 25 percent. Similarly, it’s quickly apparent that a 5 gramme weight gain is one third (33.3 percent) of 15 grammes, the sample’s oven-dry weight. As soon as the learner understood the base line for the dry basis calculation is the dry weight of the wood, not the pre-dried wet weight, all was clear to her. She was then able to comprehend how, using the dry basis methodology of assessing wood moisture content wood MC figures such as 100 percent or greater were possible, e.g., wet weight, 200 grammes and oven-dry weight of 100 grammes.
This learner’s confusion had led her to unknowingly stumble upon the methodology for assessing wood moisture content referred to earlier, i.e., the “wet basis” (Forestry Commission, 2011). To calculate the wood moisture content percentage on the wet basis (wb) the formula given by The Forestry Commission (2011, p5) is:
“The MCwb = (the weight of water in a sample/ total initial weight of the sample) X 100.” MCwb as indicated earlier, means Moisture Content Wet Basis. Results are expressed as a percentage.
Further reading, if so desired, can be found at the following links:
Richard Jones has lived his life with a simple sense of practicality – he has learned what works, what doesn’t and what must be done to get food on the table, while also allowing for trial and error to explore work and hobbies that have ultimately led to fulfillment.
Endlessly interested in the whys beneath the whats, Richard devoted more than a decade of his life to “Cut and Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology.” And that alone should paint a pretty complete picture, although, given the technical nature of the work, maybe an unfair one. He’s meticulous, yes, but not stuffy. He played rugby for years, dots conversations with the word “bloody,” and enjoys biking through the English countryside – particularly if the destination is a pub with the promise of a warm (by American standards) beer.
Born in Shropshire, on the Welsh border in the West Midlands of England, Richard grew up in a farming family – one that has farmed for generations. He lived with his parents and older brother, and attended a boarding school from age 7 to 17.
“In some ways, I preferred to be at school,” Richard says. “All my friends were at school.”
Richard recalls childhood summers spent working on the farm – driving tractors, baling hay, building fences, looking after cattle and sheep. But he also remembers the joy he found in all the farm’s hiding places, and riding his bike for miles around the English countryside with narrow, windy lanes, hills, trees and green, green, green. As he got older he enjoyed tinkering with cars and engines, breaking things and then fixing them. “I guess I had an aptitude to work with things,” he said.
While not a lover of school, Richard did well in English and his woodworking courses. Once his daily lessons were complete, he’d usually make his way back to the woodwork room and build things (table and chairs) and carve things (hedgehogs and giraffes). He did quite well in sports, and played several – rugby, hockey, cricket, swimming and athletics.
Unlike his brother, who still runs the family farm, Richard didn’t love farming. As a teenager, Richard dropped out of school and came back home to work on the family farm, but six to eight months in, he had a falling out with his father. So, he left.
He worked one or two daft (his word) jobs – hotel porter and the like – to make ends meet. He dreamed of being a joiner and furniture maker, but he was unable to get an apprenticeship. In 1973, he did, however, get a job with a small shop (no longer in business) that specialized in joinery, furniture making and restorations. His mentor was a grumpy old Scot, who occasionally let him borrow tools and taught him a lot (you can read about his sharpening lesson here). Richard stayed on for two years, but it wasn’t an official apprenticeship with formal qualifications at the end. In 1975, Richard applied to North East London Polytechnic, a vocational-type school to study business.
“I thought I ought to get a job in an office where they pay some money,” Richard says. “Work that made my hands calloused didn’t get me very much. But people who worked in offices, that paid a lot more – I thought.”
This time around, Richard loved school. “I had a great time in college,” he says, laughing. “I did all the stuff you’re not supposed to do.”
After graduating in 1977, Richard applied for many office jobs, but couldn’t find work. “I thought, well, I could do something with my bag of tools,” he says. “I could get a job doing some joinery and earn some money rather than have no money. And I’ve basically stuck to that, ever since, one way or another.”
Becoming a Joiner and Maker, in the British Tradition
Richard’s first job was with a joinery firm that made bank and security windows, which he did until 1979. That same year he married his first wife, Jill, whom he met in college. They married in Edinburgh, Scotland. “I managed to get various jobs there for a little while,” Richard says. “All sorts of jobs, working in shops and joiner work.” Then, Richard and Jill, with rucksacks and tents, traveled extensively, to places such as France, Spain and Morocco.
For the next two years Richard and Jill lived in England, near London, and Richard continued to work various jobs, including a short stint that took him back to his roots – driving tractors on a local farm (they had just returned from months of travel, and Richard needed the work). Richard eventually made his way back to joinery work, this time working for Chubb Security Installations.
“I was doing all this work, furniture and joinery malarkey, and I didn’t have any qualifications,” Richard says. “I thought I better get some.”
So in 1981, he applied to Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology, which offered a well-respected furniture course to about 15 students. He was one of the 15 accepted, and the course earned him a City & Guilds 555 Level 3 in Furniture Advanced Studies with distinction.
Steeped in the Arts & Crafts and Cotswold traditions, the college and his instructors were linked to famous British makers and designers through their association with Loughborough College, and connections to such luminaries as Ernest Gimson, Gordon Russell, Ernest and Sydney Barnsley, Norman Jewson and Peter Waals. Robert Wearing, who Richard describes as “a funny mousy little man, always with his damn jigs” came by once a week – every Friday – to teach. “He was very earnest, very focused,” Richard says. “He had a jig for everything.”
Shrewsbury, the great British makers of the 19th and 20th century, his tutors and Robert Wearing all influenced Richard’s education, and, perhaps to some extent, his style. But Richard is quick to note that while he respects the Arts & Crafts style, he doesn’t particularly like it, including the exposed joinery.
“The movement itself produced some great furniture and the philosophy was kind of interesting, but it didn’t work,” Richard says. He says he likes things that are well made with reasonably uncluttered lines. He admires craftsmanship, quality and practicality. “I’ve always been driven by the need to get the job out of the door fairly quickly.”
And that is something key to know – and in many ways, respect – about Richard. While many folks build furniture on the side, a hobby in addition to their work, it is Richard’s work. He’s typically had to work with clients who need something specific, and can pay a certain price. He may consider fancy inlay, he says, but if that fancy inlay is not part of the client’s budget, he has to cut it out.
“Very rarely in my life have I had the luxury to go over the top with my design,” Richard says. “That’s always been important to me – to always make stuff at a price the client is willing to pay. I’ve never really had the opportunity to just play.”
There’s honesty and fairness in that, and a practicality that, in a circular way, has allowed Richard to turn what many can only conceive of as an avocation, into a vocation. At first glance this way of living may seem restrictive. But by cutting out the fluff, Richard has turned a great weekend love for many into his everyday life’s work, and lately, he’s his own boss. What may seem stifling, to some, has actually earned Richard a lot of freedom.
This viewpoint, in part, also explains Richard’s love of technology. “A lot of people reject technology because they believe it takes away skills,” he says. “I don’t see it that way. Technology allows you to make something complex very quickly.” Advanced equipment, CNC, AutoCAD and similar programs all inspire Richard. For, in addition to completing often-boring work (think shelf pins), there’s brilliancy, he says, in the building of the machine and manipulating it to take on complex tasks. “It’s very exciting,” he says.
Richard helped build these choir stalls for St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh, while employed at Whytock and Reid, in 1984. This photo was taken years later, in 2005.
After graduating from Shrewsbury, Richard and Jill moved back to Edinburgh, his wife’s hometown. Jobless, Richard walked into Whytock and Reid, Edinburgh’s oldest and, perhaps, most prestigious cabinetmaking and upholstery shop, and asked, “Do you have a job?” They replied: “Aye, when can you start?” Established in 1807 and awarded the Royal warrant by Queen Victoria in 1838, Whytock and Reid furnished many fine castles and homes throughout Scotland and beyond until its closure in 2004.
This photo of Richard was taken in 1985 while he was employed at Edinburgh College of Art.
About a year later, in 1984, Richard applied for the furniture technician position at Edinburgh College of Art. For nine years he worked with furniture design majors and staff, fabricating furniture for and with them, offering technical and aesthetic advice. He was also charged with the day-to-day general running and maintenance of the large furniture workshop, buying and storing timber, maintaining all the hand and power tools, and more.
“That’s where my real interest in becoming more of a furniture designer/maker began,” Richard says. “I was in an environment with not just woodworkers (furniture designers) but other creative people: jewelers, glassblowers, interior designers, fine artists (painters), architects, photographers, weavers, stained glass artists and sculptors,” he says. “I really got interested in all this visual stuff that was going on. Prior to that, I would just make things. Here, I started to better appreciate design, form, shape and function.”
Rugby, Love & Moving to America
Richard resting after a rugby training session, in Houston, Texas, likely autumn 1996.
At this time Richard was playing recreational rugby, his passion. “It’s sometimes described as a bit like American football but some say it’s perhaps harder,” he says. “We haven’t got any helmets and pads on for a start; we don’t change just about the whole team at the end of plays, so we don’t get all those breaks to get our breath back.”
Richard receiving a pass from a teammate during a Seven-a-Side rugby tournament in College Station, Texas, likely 1996.
One of his fellow rugby players had a cousin who played rugby in Texas, and he invited the club to spend a few weeks playing in the States. So they saved money for two years and took two teams to Texas where they played for a wild three weeks (in addition to playing rugby well, the teams drank well, too). His first night in Texas, Richard, by then divorced, met Gail, a Houstonian. They clicked immediately, and she followed him and the teams all over Texas. After Richard went back to Edinburgh, they kept in touch, and both took several trans-Atlantic trips to see each other. They married in Edinburgh, and Gail moved to Scotland.
Richard continued working at the college, but after nine years the job became too comfortable, with no chance of promotion. Gail missed the States, so in 1993, they moved to Houston.
One of Richard’s primary roles while serving as workshop manager at The Children’s Museum of Houston was the supervision and construction of the “Magic School Bus: Inside the Earth” traveling exhibition. The work was complex, and featured various rooms with many interactive elements.
Richard got a temporary job working with a firm that built exhibition stands, and while there, a colleague recommended Richard for another temporary job, this one at The Children’s Museum of Houston. He was soon offered the workshop manager position; he was responsible for running all aspects of the Exhibits Fabrication Shop. While there he also managed the build for the museum’s “Magic School Bus” touring exhibition.
In 1995, Richard decided it was time to open his own shop – Richard Jones Furniture. He rented a shared 7,000-square-foot workshop, which included office space. Two one-man businesses co-existed, pooling and sharing machinery. Richard’s clients were mostly householders and small businesses. He worked with designers and also designed himself. Occasionally, for big jobs, he’d hire sub-contractors.
It was during this time that Gail suggested Richard write an article for a magazine. “This was before I got into computers and stuff,” he says. “So I bought a computer and thought, this is a good way to learn all the damn keys on the keyboard. I didn’t know how to type or anything like that. I started to write about woodworking. Once I found where all the keys were, all this stuff just spewed out of me.”
Richard wrote for many magazines, including this cover feature for the April 2003 issue of “Woodwork.”
Coming up with content was easy. It was the editing that took time. He bought a nice camera, took accompanying photos, and easily sold his work to publications such as Woodshop News, The Woodworker, Woodworker’s Journal, and Furniture & Cabinetmaking.
At this time Richard’s work was also being shown in exhibits including the Philadelphia Furniture and Furnishings Show, the Houston Furniture and Design Expo, and invitational exhibitions hosted by Brazosport Art League, Gensler Architecture, Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Gallery3 and more.
It was hot in Texas. An outside temperature of 100° meant an inside shop temperature of 110°. So in 2003, Richard and Gail moved back to the U.K. “I couldn’t take the heat,” he says. “It was great in the winter, but the heat just drove me nuts. My wife loves the heat. I missed the British things. I liked America and I liked Texas, and the people were really nice. But I missed the warm beer at rugby and, just, all that kind of British stuff. I missed my daughter and family.” Gail agreed to move back on one condition: Richard needed to have job. “And that’s how I became an accidental teacher,” he says.
Richard had been applying for a wide variety of jobs, including that of lecturer at Rycotewood Furniture Centre. He was quickly accepted for the position. Although he had never taught before, Richard said he was reasonably organized and managed to wrap his head around the job fairly quickly. Plus, the subject was second nature to him – guided by course curriculum he taught furniture design and making to undergraduates. He also continued to write for trade journals, a kind of teaching in and of itself.
Torpedore (2013). American cherry, hard maple, dye and lacquer.
Torpedore (2013). American cherry, hard maple, dye and lacquer.
Torpedore (2013). American cherry, hard maple, dye and lacquer.
In 2005, Richard accepted a position at Leeds College of Art, where he served as leader of the BA (Hons) Furniture Making program. Throughout his teaching career, Richard kept writing and building furniture on his own time, and exhibiting his work throughout the U.K. Exhibitions took place at or with the Northern Contemporary Furniture Makers at venues such as Tennants Auctioneers in North Yorkshire, and CUBE Gallery in Manchester. Between 2006 and 2008, Richard also earned a certificate in education, teacher training from the University of Huddersfield.
Eventually, Leeds ended its furniture course citing, for instance, income from furniture student fees and the footprint requirements of a furniture student compared to, for example, a graphic artist. “The craft furniture market has shrunk massively over the last 50 or 60 years,” Richard says. “Not many people are able to sustain themselves on craft furniture.”
Omega Hall/Console Table (2014). American cherry.
Omega Hall/Console Table (2014). American cherry.
Omega Hall/Console Table (2014). American cherry.
In 2014, Richard forged a new path filled with varied work – furniture maker, joiner, woodworker, writer, teacher, consultant – a path he’s still on, today. “I kind of like that, it keeps me out of trouble,” Richard says. “My two best subjects at school were English and woodwork” – two subjects he excels at and makes a living with, today. He also became a member of the City & Guilds Institute, Leadership and Management, receiving his Masters Award in 2014.
By 2005, Richard had stopped writing for magazines, for two reasons: One, the pay was simply too little for the amount of work each required. And two, he realized timber technology, what he wanted to write about, was too big of a subject for the magazine format. So, in 2005, he started writing a book on timber technology. He finished it 10 years later.
The Making of “Cut & Dried”
Richard wrote “Cut & Dried” while also working full-time, and building furniture nights and weekends. “I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve put into it,” he says. Those years, filled with sometimes-intense four- to six-week periods of writing, included research, asking for peer reviews, editing and more. “If I was to say, I probably spent the equivalent of two-and-a-half to three years on it,” he says.
Richard also took care of much of the photography, traveling up and down the countryside in Scotland, the south coasts of England, and visiting and talking to people at timber kilns.
And this was, perhaps, the first time in Richard’s life that he eschewed practicality in terms of time. At one point he was offered a publishing contract, but it came with a deadline. So he turned it down. With no buyer for the book, he had no obligation to factor in an hourly wage. It was side work that took over all of his free time; it was work in addition to. The end result, he thought, would be the result of all his years of training, work and knowledge. And he wanted it to be worthy of all those years, he wanted it to be good and right, and intellectual but accessible, no matter how long the process took.
“Hopefully the result is very good for everybody,” Richard says. “I was bloody-minded, determined. I thought, someone needs this. I really believed somebody needed a book of this type on this subject.”
Part of that belief stemmed from the fact that the book he was writing did not exist. He wanted to create the definitive guide on timber technology, not from the point of view of a wood scientist, but rather from the point of view of a woodworker. He wanted to offer the often-complex information in a less-dense format, and in a way easily understood by those not scientifically minded. It took him years to make sense of it all. And so, throughout the writing process, he constantly asked himself, “How can I make it so that any other reader can make sense of it?”
And that took time.
“Wood is a bloody difficult material, and if you just keep blundering along you’re going to keep making mistakes,” Richard says. “I felt like I needed to know more about this stuff because I work with it. And although I am reasonably good, I thought I’d really like to know the why behind what’s going. There’s just something about that that really appealed to me, the fact that we take this material that grows naturally, and we turn it into other things.”
Richard loves trees. Perhaps it’s a love that developed when he was just a boy, riding his bike through the hills of the English countryside.
“I look out the windows, and I see these lovely trees, and they are just fascinating,” he says. “Many of the trees drop their leaves in autumn. And then by magic comes spring, with new flowers and leaves, and how do they all do that? I just think it’s fascinating. The homes they create, for bugs and all that stuff, the medicine that comes from them … I cycle on my bike through the woods and I see the magpies and crows and trees are just fascinating places, habitation for lots of different things, all together.”
Richard and I spent a lot of time working together on “Cut & Dried,” and given the distance, it was all via email, hundreds of emails – editing notes, answers to questions, at one point panicky queries regarding images and a chart (something like this happens with every book and thankfully, as with all the others, this one, too, worked itself out). And, as often happens in many months’ worth of writing, whether by hand and posted or sent electronically, more casual notes are dropped in, often near the end – details about weekend plans, family happenings.
The editor/writer bond is interesting, as you’re almost always working on years’ worth of work, sometimes, even, someone’s life’s work. There’s a sacredness to the task, for all involved, and as rewarding as it can be it’s also teeming with anxiety. And so, it was with great apprehension I read Richard’s email dated June 11, the day he finally, after so many years of intense work, received his author’s copies. “I’m really pleased,” he wrote. “The book looks wonderful at my first skim through. In a funny sort of way, I feel a bit overwhelmed and just don’t know what to say. I think I need a bit of time to get my head around what’s just happened.” Kind words followed – Richard excels at graciousness and professionalism.
Richard’s days (and nights) feel much longer now. With the book done, new paths are open – there’s more freedom.
“I like to keep busy,” Richard says. “I don’t fancy retirement.” In addition to work, Richard gardens, bikes, spends time with friends and watches rugby. He visits his family, including his daughter and twin 12-year-old grandchildren. Richard’s father died young, at the age of 70. But near the end of his life, Richard says they both began to understand each other. Richard even built some furniture for his parents, and they paid him fairly.
Richard would like to design and build more furniture, but he has little interest in owning a furniture-making business full time. “I don’t want to invest in all the machinery and premises at this age, over 60,” he says. “The craft furniture designer/maker road is really tough to go down.”
Consultancy is something he does occasionally, and would like to expand on. The work is varied and complex – legal disputes, timber technology issues, design and construction questions, and workshop safety. And it can pay quite well. Richard is also interested in developing guest teaching opportunities and perhaps speaking engagements, especially in the field of timber technology.
And so he continues on, approaching each day with solid work ethic, great intellect and his simple sense of practicality. And perhaps now, that his book is done, he’ll be able to relax more often, by having a pint and watching some rugby, which he says is, “my big interest outside all things woody.”
This gorgeous book (we can say that without being braggadocious because we replicated the design from the Swedish original) teaches you techniques for cutting triangle chips, fingernail cuts, lines and letters — plus you’ll learn what kind of wood, knives and tools you need to get started, and techniques for painting your finished work. You’ll find 15 projects, from simple decorations on knife handles and signs to more demanding objects such as boxes and combs.
In addition to providing practical knowledge, “Karvsnitt” opens a window into older slöjd and folk art, and provides fascinating in-depth descriptions of the traditional meanings of different patterns and symbols.
“Blåudd” (Blue chip) has two ridge borders with single-sided triangle chips and a X-shaped border with fire-eyes in between. “Rödkryss” (Red cross) has an X-shaped border with lines running through each cross, which are cut before the three-sided triangle chips. Spoon carvers: Top left Jarrod Dahl; top right Derek Sanderson, with a kolrosed braid pattern. The rest are made by the author.
The spoons you carve will be too beautiful to stash away in some box. They deserve to be displayed on the wall! This spoon rack has many names. In Sweden, it comes in local variations, such as the spoon chair, spoon bar, spoon tree, spoon shelf, spoon rack and spoon hedge. It might be fun to check the archives of your local museum to see what it was called and how both the shape and pattern have been designed where you live.
Level of difficulty: intermediate Tools: Froe, maul, axe, drawknife, sheath knife, fine-toothed Japanese saw, chisel 18mm (11/16″), small wooden mallet, chip carving knife. Material: Straight-grained birch.
Method Split out a piece of straight-grained birch, ~40 x 4 x 2 cm (15-3/4″ x 1-9/16″ x 13/16″). Carve it smooth and evenly thick in the shaving horse or plane it with a smooth plane on a workbench. Cut a wide bevel on the front side, on both top and bottom. Space the spoon holes evenly on the side facing the wall. They should be 25mm (1″) wide. The wall between each hole should be 10–12mm (~3/8″). Saw cuts 12mm (1/2″) deep. Hollow out the gaps with a chisel. Place the blank against a flat board that can take marks from the chisel. To avoid unexpected tear-out, remove half the material with the first cut before turning the blank and clean-cutting in line with the depth mark from the other side. Carve the sides of the spoon holes and drill holes for screws or nails about 20mm (13/16″) from the end grain. Clean-carve all the sawn surfaces.
Sketch the pattern. Divide the front into rectangular sections and mark them with crosses. Draw single-sided triangle chips a short distance from the centerline of each cross to create a flat surface of about 2mm (1/16″) in the shape of a cross or X-shaped cross. If you feel confident, you can also cut them directly, without sketching. Leave about 1mm (1/32″) of flat surface toward the sides.
The long V-shaped grooves can also be cut with a small V-tool, but the chip carving knife creates a deeper blackness in the bottom of the cut.
Where the crosses meet, a ridge is formed between them, creating a fire-eye. It’s most practical to make all the cuts with the same angle along the entire border at once. Start with all the 90° angles and finish with the 30° angles. More detailed descriptions can be found in the chapter on cutting techniques. Paint and wax, then hang your spoon rack in the kitchen. Warning! Daily use of wooden spoons with carved patterns can lead to a lifelong addiction.
Detail on a mangle board from Nord-Trøndelag, Norway. The white cowrie shell is a small porcelain-like shell from the Indian Ocean that has been used to decorate harnesses for draft animals. Its shape was an exotic feature in folk culture and was often painted or incorporated into patterns. Here, the border consists of elliptical grooves, known as vesicae piscis, and three-sided triangle chips combined with V-shaped grooves.
Editor’s Note: One of these days, I’d like to try making the hanging tool rack for the ATC or DTC a la this project from Jögge – can’t see why it wouldn’t work!
