I have one of these stools, and use it every year at my neighborhood’s storied Fourth of July Parade and other community events. And it’s seen almost weekly use at outdoor gatherings during the last 18 months or so – the addition of a carrying strap made it particularly comfortable and convenient to sling over my shoulder as I walked to various neighbor’s houses for socially distanced gatherings; the strap left my hands free for carrying bourbon.)
— Fitz
Three-legged folding stools appear in many Western cultures, including the French, English and American. They have been popular with soldiers, sportsmen, campers and artists for at least two centuries.
This stool is a great introductory project to campaign furniture, especially if you are new to turning or working with leather. There are only three pieces of wood, four pieces of leather and some metal hardware. You can easily build one in a day.
Choosing Materials I have seen some of these camp stools built using dowels, and they are strong enough to hold most people. However, I like to build them from mahogany, teak or ash that has dead-straight grain. I’ve had nightmares about getting a stick stuck in my backside from a stool disaster.
If you can build the stool with riven stock (oak or ash are good choices), it will be quite strong. Many original stools used 1″-diameter legs. However, my recommendation is to use stouter stock. I have built reproductions with 1″-diameter legs, and they felt too springy under my 185-pound frame.
You don’t need to make the legs baseball bats, but try for something between 1-1/8″ diameter to 1-1/4″ diameter. The leather can be almost anything 7 ounces (just shy of 1/8″ thick) or heavier. Vegetable-tanned leather that you dye yourself is a particularly strong choice.
You also will need rivets to join the leather pieces – unless you are skilled at hand-stitching. While hollow rivets (sometimes called rapid rivets) are inexpensive, easy to find and strong enough, I prefer the look and unerring permanence of solid copper rivets. I used No. 9 rivets with posts that are 1/2″ long.
To attach the leather to the wooden legs, you’ll need three No. 10 x 1-1/2″-long brass screws plus matching finishing washers.
Finally, you’ll need the hardware that allows the legs to open and shut. Traditionally, this was a three-headed bolt that once was easy to find. Now, that hardware is rare in North America. If you are a blacksmith or have access to a good welder, making a three-way bolt is straightforward. I have seen a couple of these bolts for sale in England, but the price with shipping to the United States was more than the cost of the bolt itself.
So I looked for a different way. Luckily, the Internet is good for something other than photos of cats playing keyboards. One maker of custom stools uses some off-the rack hardware to make an effective three-way bolt and shares that information freely on his web site.
Here’s what you need for legs that are up to 1-1/4″ in diameter:
• A hex-headed bolt with a 5/16″ shank that is long enough to pass through two of the legs and protrude out the other side by 1/2″. A 3″-long hex-head bolt will work with 1-3/16″-diameter legs. • An eyebolt with a 1/4″ or 5/16″ shank that is long enough to pass through one of the legs and protrude out the other side by 1/4″. (Note: You can hacksaw any of this threaded hardware to length. An eyebolt that has a total length of 2-1/2″ should be sufficient.) • Two acorn-headed nuts. • Three washers. • 15 No. 9 copper rivets.
Parts • 2 Legs, 1-1/4″ dia. x 23-3/4″ l • 1 Seat, 7 oz., 13-1/2″ w x 13-1/2″ l • 3 Lips, 7 oz., 3″ w x 8″ l
Turn the Legs The three legs are easy to turn, even if your favorite turning tool is #80-grit sandpaper. Turn the legs to round using a roughing gouge or carbide-tipped roughing tool. Create a smooth, clean cylinder of about 1-1/4″ in diameter with a skew or other finishing tool.
The feet shown are 1-3/16″ in diameter and 5/8″ tall. Make the feet by turning down the foot. Then turn the ankle to 7/8″ in diameter. Round the foot, then taper the rest of the leg down to the ankle. The taper should begin 6″ from the bottom of the leg.
A bulbous foot. The foot can be almost any shape, from a bead similar to the foot of the Roorkee to this teardrop.
I added four small grooves where the hardware holes will go – two above the hardware and two below. Little details such as these grooves and beads make the legs look like something fancier than three store-bought dowels.
Not original. These little grooves add some visual interest to the joint. However, they’re not a detail I found on any original stool. So skip them if you are going for authenticity.
Sand the legs to remove any rough tool marks. I finished the legs on the lathe. First I burnished the surface with a “polissoir” (a French polishing tool made from tightly bound broom corn). Then I applied beeswax to the legs with the workpiece spinning. I used the polissoir to drive the beeswax into the pores of the wood (again, while the lathe was spinning). Then I used a rough cotton cloth (I’d like to be fancy and say it was muslin, but it was an old bag that held corn grits) to buff the wax. Then I applied another coat of wax and buffed that.
If you want to add a little age to the wood, apply a coat of black wax and push it into the grooves and pores. Let the wax set up then buff it.
Wax is not a permanent finish, but it is easily renewed or repaired if your stool is for the drawing room instead of the campsite.
Leg Elevation
Seat Plan
Lips Plan
Bore Three Holes All three holes are located in the same spot on each of the three legs and should be the same diameter – just big enough to allow the hardware to pass through. The holes are located 11-5/8″ down from the top of the legs.
The best way to bore these holes is with a drill press or hand-powered post drill. You want the hole to be dead straight and pass through the middle of the leg. If you are a whiz with a hand drill or cordless drill then go for it.
Dead center. The holes for the hardware need to be bored through the middle so the leg isn’t weak. A cradle helps hold the legs for drilling, no matter how you make the hole. Drill the hole so the brad point of the bit barely pokes through the leg (right). Rotate the leg so the tiny hole left from the brad point is facing up. Finish the hole.
Install the Hardware Strip the hardware of its zinc if you like – I use a citric acid solution for this. Here’s how the hardware goes together:
• Put a washer on the bolt. Push the bolt through one leg. • Place the eyebolt on the post of the bolt. Put the other leg on the bolt. • Add a washer to the end of the bolt, then drive on the acorn nut. • Push the post of the eyebolt through the third leg. Add a washer and acorn nut.
Drill pilot holes that are deep enough to receive the No. 10 screws into the top ends of the legs.
Common hardware. The bolt, eyebolt, washers and nuts are all items found easily at a half-decent hardware store.
Leather Seat The seat is four pieces of material: a triangular seat and three pockets that look a bit like lips when you cut them out. When I cut out leather, I make patterns for my pieces from thin MDF or hardboard – usually 1/4″-thick material.
Knife work. You will probably make more than one stool, so make plywood patterns of the seat parts and cut them out using a sharp utility knife.
Put the patterns on the leather and cut out the seat and three lips using a sharp utility knife.
You can hand-stitch the lips to the seat. If you aren’t up for stitching, rivets work well and give the project a military flair.
First punch. Using a leather punch, make a hole through the seat and pocket piece. I’m using a kitchen cutting board as a backer.
Secure each lip to the seat first with one rivet at one of the tips of the seat. Punch a snug hole for the rivet through both pieces of leather, drive on the washer or “burr,” snip off the excess and peen the post over the burr.
Insert the rivet. Put the rivet through the holes. The flat face of the rivet should be on the top surface of the seat.
Now bend one end of the lip up and rivet the end to the seat about 1/4″ from the end of the lip. Repeat for the other end of the lip. Finally, add two more rivets between the three existing rivets. Repeat the whole process for the other two corners.
Like a washer. The “burr” part of a traditional rivet is what pinches the leather. Place it over the post. Then drive it on the post with a rivet setter.
One quick note on neatness: Be sure to put the burr so it faces the floor for all these joints.
After the pockets are riveted, use a sharp utility knife to trim any little bits of the pocket that aren’t flush to the seat.
If you purchased undyed leather, finish the leather with a dye, oil and wax. Burnish the edges with a piece of wood and a little spit (water will do nicely as well).
Attach the seat to the legs. Punch a clearance hole through each lip that will allow a No. 10 screw to pass. Screw the leather to the legs with a finishing washer under the head of each screw.
That’s all there is to it. You can make the tool easy to transport by making a belt that will go around the girth of the closed stool and screwing that belt to one leg. Or you could make a canvas bag embroidered with your football team’s logo. After all, when going into battle, it’s always best to fly your colors.
Jögge Sundqvist (woodworker, teacher, performer, musician and author of several books) and Nina Lindelöf married 12 years ago, after having been together for 30 years. How did they meet?
“Ho, ho! It was rock ‘n’ roll,” Jögge says. “It was lovely.”
There were a lot of parties during those days. “And I saw this wonderful woman and I was so shy, I didn’t even dare to look at her,” Jögge says. “And she started to raise some interest. It was just right, totally right. And it still is.”
In 1992 they moved to the countryside, to Kasamark, about 20 minutes outside Umeå. At the time Nina had been working as a successful costume designer for Umeå’s local theaters.
“But we wanted out from the city,” Jögge says. “We had a daughter, Hillevi, who was 2-years-old, and we wanted her to grow up in the countryside, close to the forest, free.”
They spent two years before they found an 1824 nearly all-original Västerbottengård, a log house with two squared rooms on each side, an entrance in the middle and a little sleeping chamber beside the entrance. They planned to restore it.
Jögge and Nina’s Västerbotten house. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Jögge turned the old barn into a workshop to begin the restoration.
“I didn’t know much about making bigger things, like houses,” he says. “But I was very happy exploring working with logs and the ways of restoring an old house carefully and with respect for tradition.”
A restored baking oven is the main focus of the kitchen. Wooden items such as spoons, ladles and spatulas are natural items in the kitchen inside Jögge and Nina’s Västerbotten house. (photos by Jögge Sundqvist)
They lived in another house on the property during the restoration process. They had a son, Herman, in 1994. After five years, they sold the house they were living in so they could afford to move to the Västerbotten house.
Wille, Jögge’s father, Herman and Hillevi (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
By now Jögge had quit his job at Umeå Central Station, having been headhunted by the craft society to work as a craft consultant, “which I really appreciated a lot,” he says. In addition to working on his own craft he served as a craft consultant throughout Västerbotten part-time, between 1988 and 1998.
Surolle, a Sour Old Man Who Set Jögge Free Jögge approached craft and parenting in the same way his father did, never insisting that his children become slöjders.
“Because then, it would never happen,” he says. “My father was just showing me how exciting it was. He was very enthusiastic – you can do this and you can do that. He was just very engaged when I had an idea. So that was my task when I had kids – to encourage them to have fun in creativity.”
Hillevi, his daughter, enjoyed drawing, and Jögge encouraged that. And he did the same with his son, Herman.
Herman planing with a shaving around his head.(photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Herman with his ship, made in the workshop. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
“We had a wonderful period in our relationship when he was waiting to go to school and he and I had about 45 minutes in my workshop when the rest of the family was already in town,” Jögge says. “And he had a lot of ideas about what to do. And we made wooden ships and figures, whatever he fancied. Because he loved to fantasize and tell stories.”
One of the family’s favorite stories involves Herman when he was about 5 years old.
“I had a customer visiting my workshop and they were pretty upper mid class,” Jögge says. “And I knew that they were probably going to order something pretty expensive so I told my family, ‘I’m going to have a visit and you have to behave, kids.’”
The customers, a couple, came, looked at pictures and were interested in a chair, which Jögge was really happy about. They went back to the house where they found Herman standing in the entrance. The man asked him a question he heard often: “Are you going to be a slöjder, like your father?”
“And then my son, who is very talkable, looked them straight in the eye and said, ‘No. My father cuts in wood but I’m going to cut in flesh when I get old.’ And the guy looked at me like, ‘What kind of crazy kid is this?’ And I looked at my son as I had never heard of anything like this before!’ And then my son finished his sentence. ‘I’m going to be a surgeon when I grow up.’ And he is, he’s becoming a doctor.”
(The couple did, indeed, buy the chair.)
In many ways Jögge’s parenting style is similar to how he approaches his work. By encouraging a union of self-exploration of tradition and wild creativity, he makes room for good, beautiful and functional objects that are also filled with meaningful whimsy.
“My father was a trained furniture maker and that is much more precise and exact,” Jögge says. “But I was much more drawn to the older craft, to the axe, to the knife, to rougher surfaces. So when I decided to run my own business I knew I had to choose what path to take and I didn’t know where I was going.”
Jewelry box. Ash, birch. Artist linseed oil paint. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Box. Ash, birch. Artist linseed oil paint. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Book cover box. Ash, birch. Artist linseed oil paint. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Mirror top. Basswood. Artist linseed oil paint. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Armchair. Larch, hawthorn, birch. Artist linseed oil paint. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Chair. Pine, birch, glass. Artist linseed oil paint. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Box. Ash, birch. Artist linseed oil paint. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Spoons and ladles. Hook-grown birch. Artist linseed oil paint and raw linseed oil. (photo by Jostein Skeidsvoll)
Armchair. Pine, birch. Artist linseed oil paint. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
“I like colors. I like rough surfaces. I like carved surfaces. I like tradition. I like the way untrained peasants in the past had a special relationship to the material, how they picked the crooked and bent material in the woods and put it in the design so it was a special design, which I will say was the slöjd design of how things looked based on their traditional knowledge on how to use the knife and the axe and the materials and the joints that had worked for years and years and years. I wanted to go on that path. But I wasn’t sure if that was right,” he says.
When Jögge began pursing owning his own craft business full-time, he created thousands of designs and was sketching all the time. One afternoon he made a stool with a heart-like shaped seat, and three naturally bent legs, almost like they were dancing. He carved quotes and sayings on the top of it, such as “U better dance,” by Prince, and “Rock on!” He painted it bright red and the whole thing had a very traditional rock ‘n’ roll feel to it.
Kiss stool. Pine, birch. Artist linseed oil paint. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Jögge had the stool on the floor of his workshop when Hillevi came home from school that day. He was eyeing it critically, as usual, still unsure of his path. Hillevi had never seen anything like it.
“Who made this one?” she asked.
“At the time, I was really deep into thinking about my grandfather and the craft and my father and what the expression of traditional craft is,” Jögge says. “So I said to her – it just came out of me – ‘Oh, an old guy up in the mountains made this.’ And she asked me, ‘What’s his name?’ ‘Yeah, his name is Olle Olsson,’ which is a very common name in Sweden. ‘He’s a sour, grumpy old guy, Olle Olsson.’ And then she asked, ‘This Olle Olsson, what sort of animals does he have?’ Because we had a goat by then, and we had a rabbit and a cat but she wanted horses and everything else and we said no. ‘Olle Olsson, yeah, he has all of them. He has goats and sheep and horses and everything.’ And she loved naming things, so she asked me, ‘What kinds of names do they have?’ She was 9 years old by then so I finally had to tell her, ‘I’m just playing with you, I’m having fun.’ She just looked at me and said, ‘OK.’ And she ran to the house.”
Jögge continued working and about 40 minutes later Hillevi returned with drawings, “wonderful drawings,” Jögge says. Under them was a nickname, “Sur Olle,” “the Sour Olle.” She drew Olle’s girlfriend, who she named Agnes Södergran, and all of Olle’s animals, naming them too.
“And then I said to myself, I probably need a guy like that,” Jögge says. “I need someone to talk with. ‘Is this good or is this bad?’ An alter ego. So I started playing around with this guy. ‘What do you think about this stool?’ ‘No, it could be a little thinner there. The legs are splaying out too much, you have to tighten them.’ So in one way he was kind of telling me the truth but I was actually telling myself the truth. And what I realized afterwards was I was lifting off the pressure of being a very good, fine furniture maker. I was accepting that I had another path that I wanted to go, more rough, more material based, more traditional based. It became totally clear. That was the reason I needed this guy to help me. Today I think of it all as a way to approach a manner, an artistic vision that was unique and personal.”
Olle Olsson, Sur Olle, engaged to Agnes Södergran. (illustration by Hillevi)
“I used to describe the traditional wall as a very thick wall because in my world, I had so many influences there. And because it’s so thick, it can be hard to jump through. But surolle helped me saw a little hole in that big wall by telling me, ‘You just have to have fun. You have to follow your path. You have to do your own thing here. You can’t be afraid of not doing the right thing. You have to do what you think is right.’”
In 1998, Jögge started his own professional craft business.
“I needed a name for my businesses and it was totally clear it had to be surolle,” he says.
A Never-ending Exploration Today, Jögge’s business stands on many legs. He teaches classes. He gives lectures about craft and slöjd – what it is, the meaning of it. And then he has a show called “Rhythm and Slöjd.”
Rhythm and Slöjd performance, drilling the hole with an T-auger for a shrink box in rhythm to the Chemical Brothers.
“It’s a storytelling performance about 45 minutes long where I make a shrink box live on stage from the very beginning, the trunk of a tree, until it works. During the time I’m making it I’m telling a lot of stories from the craft field. The first five minutes it’s kind of heavy rock music on stage. I then do everything in rhythm. I saw it off in rhythm. I shave it on the shaving horse in rhythm. I drill the hole in rhythm. I carve in rhythm. It is all done very precisely and exactly in rhythm. So that is special.”
Beginning in 2004, Jögge has performed this show more than 30 times, at schools and for adults, at Plymouth CRAFT and Spoonfest, in Sweden, the United States, Japan and Great Britain.
“But my favorite thing to do is make objects,” he says. “That’s the main reason I’m working.” He recently expanded his shop. And lately, he’s been enjoying working on public commissions for the Swedish Arts Council: theaters, Umeå Airport, Umeå University Library, a nature trail, the Church of Sweden, Västerbotten County Council, the Nordic Museum, schools and more.
“Stairway to heaven” ladder in crooked-grown birch. Raw linseed oil. (photo by Jostein Skeidsvoll)
Littefox. Ash and crooked-grown birch. Public commission to Umeå City Library.(photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Västanå Theatre entrance. Pine, basswood. Artist oil color. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Amelia Earhart bench with back. Pine, crooked-grown birch, basswood. Public commission to Umeå Airport. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
“They pay pretty well and they’re a little bigger and so I kind of like that,” he says. “I would say right now I’m finally where I want to be.” His private commission waiting list is currently four to five deep. Clients simply ask for a cupboard, say, and he suggests designs, creates drawings and says how much it will cost. And clients almost always agree.
Jögge’s chip-carving knife, made in collaboration with Kay Embretsen. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Jögge is carving the design on some chip-carving knives the whole time he talks. He’s partnered with Swedish knife maker Kay Embretsen, who makes his own Damascus steel. A local store is selling a kit that contains one of Jögge’s books, a chip-carving knife designed and made by Jögge in partnership with Kay, and basswood blanks.
The beginning of the pandemic was “a total disaster,” Jögge says, as all his classes and lectures were canceled. But, he had just signed a contract for a new book a few months prior.
“The book was my pandemic babe,” he says. “My wife was working from home and I was working from here, just writing the book and making all the objects. I finally had all that time to make an object and realize, ‘This is not good enough – you have to make a new one – this pattern could be even better – you have to rewrite this one more time.’ You know that thing, as a writer, you have to really give it some time? I was able to give it some time, and even some more time in between that.”
Jögge’s newest book, forthcoming in English from Lost Art Press. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
The book contains 16 projects and Jögge made six or seven objects for each project just so he could pick the best ones as featured examples.
“I’m so happy because if I had so much other work at the same time, I doubt the book would have been so good because I wouldn’t have been able to go so deeply into each of the tasks, so to say. You know how it is it – the older you get, you have to have the right feeling for the design, especially the objects you’ve never made before. It has to take some time before you can really decide, ‘Was this good enough?’ So I was happy for the isolation that it actually was. Socially, it was a disaster.”
Jögge’s hope for the future is simple: To still be able to do woodwork as a way to earn a living, “as long as my body tells me it can,” he says. “I had some problems with my hips and I’ve been having problems with my shoulders and elbows. So I have to exercise. I have to go to the gym and do my work there. That’s the only worry I have in the future is not being able to work.”
Nina is a physical therapist who teaches as a lecturer at a local university, so her expertise in this matter helps. Together they enjoy spending time with their grandchild, Lova, who is 3 years old.
Jögge’s grandchild, Lova. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
“The thing that strikes me about having a grandchild – and having children – is that humans are always exploring,” Jögge says. “They want to know about the world. It’s so natural for them. She’s always thinking and raising questions, ‘Why is this?’ ‘Why is that?’ And that’s the fun part in craft – you always have to explore. And then you have to learn to control your body and the tool. And you have to know the material. And you have to find out how people did it in the early days, how they solved problems, and that’s a never-ending story. You can always find new and interesting ways of making things and exploring the world. And that’s what I’m doing. And, of course, it’s a discovery of yourself too, also in an artistic way. You’re exploring what skills you have and what you want to express but also what skills you don’t have and what you need to learn and in a way, what kind of beauty you want to show.”
The Language of Hands “If you find something you like, and it’s fun, and you’re good at it, then you should keep going on that track,” Jögge says. “That is what I see in good, old traditional craft.”
Jögge uses objects made by slöjders from the 1700s as an example. “They wanted to make objects that were nice to use and functional. And they had to be strong and decent. But they also had to have beautiful designs about them. So every time you work with them, everything from a spoon to whatever, you would say, ‘Oh, how nice! This is good work, this is something.’ And maybe you give thought to the one who made it. A way of passing love to the next generation is to make things that they can use for their children and think about the knowledge in the past that was used in the making, and that they had fun in the making and that they also wanted it to have quality. Because for them, it was about quality in the objects and quality in life. Those two things have to go together.”
“The four walls” box. Made using shrink-box techniques. Aspen, birch. 128 piercings. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Ladle. Crooked birch. Artist oil paint and raw linseed oil. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Spoon. Crooked birch. Artist oil paint and raw linseed oil. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Backrest on chair in crooked birch. Artist oil paint and raw linseed oil. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
Six-leaf rosettes on the back of a mobile stand. (photo by Jögge Sundqvist)
This is why Jögge eschews production work.
“If you just make stools and you make thousands of them, after a while, it’s not love,” he says. “It’s just making money. So this is my path: To always put feeling in an object. Because when I feel, I’m satisfied. I don’t know if I’m satisfied all the time with the money I get from it,” he adds, laughing. “That’s the business part. That’s the surviving part. But for me, the main reason is that I want to hand it over and say, ‘Yeah. I’m really happy about this. It has strength. It has function. It has beauty. All the joints are perfectly done and the material choices are well done and it’s something that you can use for more than 100 years and it will be in your family as a treasured object and I’m happy. That’s my goal.”
When thinking about his life Jögge thinks a lot about driving forces: Why has it been so important for him to express himself by working wood traditionally? He recognizes that he’s drawn to its organic existence.
“People were living in a self-sufficient society where they really had to learn all the skills with the knife and the axe and the material they had. And they were trained to do that from 4 years old. So when they were in their 20s, they were professionals I would say, almost, everyone. And some of them wanted to express themselves really well. And they were really good. And you can tell by going to the archives in museums and looking at the stuff. Once in a while you will see something that a person did and it is really, really good.”
And Jögge isn’t just talking about wood here. He’s also heavily influenced by textiles, and the patterns in textiles, especially. When he sees work that someone has poured their heart into, he feels something.
“I can tell I have a friend there, a colleague there,” he says. “We are companions, we understand each other. I don’t know their names but we are still friends. It’s kind of a relief to think about that. A connection of sorts, to generations back. The language of hands.”
Editor’s note: When I write a book, I usually write about 10 chapters that get cut out because the tone is wrong or they just don’t fit into the flow of the chapters. This was written to be the final chapter of “The Stick Chair Book,” which is what I’m working on now. It’s flawed, but good enough for a blog entry.
If there is one thing we can agree on, it’s probably this: Factory-made wooden chairs are the biggest hunks of garbage on the market today. With rare exception, their parts are joined with dowels or (worse) flimsy mechanical fasteners.
These chairs are designed to fail after a certain number of uses. Then you are supposed to buy a new chair with the same limited lifespan. Furniture manufacturers don’t tell you this, of course. Who would buy a chair that was advertised to be good for 6,000 sits or 400 lap dances?
But we all know it. And somehow, we accept the fact without complaint. As soon as a wooden chair starts to sway, you better throw it to the curb lest you end up in the ER with a new stick implant. (And a new nickname.)
Here’s the other maddening thing: This is not a new problem.
I own a gorgeous Morris chair made by the Shop of the Crafters, circa 1905. It’s made from thick quartersawn oak and looks to be built like a tank. The truth, however, is that the chair is a piece of crap. After I owned it for six years, its base became loose. I decided to take it apart and reglue the mortise-and-tenon joints with hide glue. Do the job properly.
I injected a little alcohol into the joints and the whole thing popped apart. It was completely joined with dowels. Dowels. And not that many dowels. I have no idea how the thing survived as long as it did.
The Arts & Crafts movement was supposed to be a reaction to this shoddy type of joinery. It was supposed to embrace the mortise-and-tenon joint and solid construction principles.
I guess every movement has its charlatans.
What can we do about this problem? Burn down the chair factories? Petition Congress to ban dowel joinery? Nah. Screw that. Instead, let’s learn to make our own damn chairs and make them so they’ll last forever.
In many ways, we are in the same situation as the people who made stick chairs in the 18th and 19th centuries. Back then, well-built chairs that were made by a professional were far too expensive for a farmer or day-laborer to own. In other words, good chairs were unobtainable.
So, the solution was to make chairs for yourself. With the tools you had on the farm and the wood around you.
There isn’t much written about these amateur chairmakers. Most of the academic research on old furniture is focused on high-style pieces made for the wealthy. And when the research does mention vernacular work, the broad assumption is that these farmers were imitating the high styles from the cities. But because vernacular makers didn’t have the skills to copy the high styles, they produced simple items that were shadows of Windsor chairs, highboys or secretaries.
These assumptions and declarations always piss me off. While we don’t have a written history of stick chairs, we do have a wooden one. And it is writ clear.
Thanks to a few furniture historians and open-minded museums, we still have collections of the old chairs that weren’t burnt for heat when the farmers could finally afford tubular steel chairs with plastic cushions. And if you spend some time with these chairs, you will see that these makers spoke their own language.
Stick chairs are their own weird and wonderful thing. Most of the forms have no analog to high-style pieces. None. They have unusual forms. Unexpected shapes. And a lot of knots, bark and splits.
If you are reading this, there’s a chance that you already appreciate stick chairs. So, this next section is on how to educate (pronounced “placate”) your family.
When people encounter stick chairs for the first time, they are usually repulsed or confused by them. They don’t look like any sort of chair they’ve encountered – ever. Stick chairs aren’t something you see on television, in furniture stores or in magazines about interior design.
It’s like visiting a foreign country where they eat raw fish for breakfast. It takes some getting used to.
When I first started making three-legged stick chairs, no one in my family or circle of friends would sit in them. It was like having a live tiger at the dinner table. The three-legged chair seemed a wild and unpredictable thing. You could be thrown to the floor at a moment’s notice.
After a few months with no injuries, however, the three-legged chairs became part of the normal dinnerscape. And when I gave my last one away to a family member, our kids howled in protest.
The best way to make the people around you appreciate (or even accept) stick chairs is to build some and put them in your home.
Well, that’s what I did.
Every stick chair around our dinner table is unique. They aren’t a matched set. They’re made from different woods. Some are painted and some aren’t. They all have different forms – tall comb backs, medium-size comb backs, a backstool with arms, and lowbacks. None of the chairs looks more important than the other.
All of them are scratched, stained and dented from almost 20 years of daily use, thanks to thousands of meals, homework sessions, family budget talks and late-night games of Uno. And while I feel sorry for the chairs at times, I sometimes I wonder if the chairs have also affected my family.
When my daughters were ages 4 and 9, I built them each a stick chair that was based on chairs in the background of the film “The Fellowship of the Ring.” We are a nerdy J.R.R. Tolkien family.
These chairs were made roughly and quickly. I was working full-time as an editor and didn’t have time to fuss over a couple chairs. We needed them for the girls, and I built them in a week or so. Even though they are the ugliest chairs I’ve made (yet), the chairs were built to last using all the principles that I now use to build chairs for customers. And they are pretty comfortable.
When our oldest daughter left for college seven years ago, she packed up her car. Then she plucked her “hobbit chair” from the dining table and put it in among her other things.
I wasn’t expecting that.
The chair followed her from Ohio to Connecticut to Pennsylvania. She eats dinner in it every night. It is her chair, and no one else’s. Her younger sister has the same plan for her red hobbit chair.
When I made those ugly red chairs, I had no preconceptions that they would become personal totems. Now I know better. It’s highly unlikely that anyone would claim this-is-mine-because-I-sat-in-it-for-decades rights from a matched set of dining chairs from Pottery Barn. But stick chairs, like three-legged stray cats, tend to imprint on you.
That might be because chairs are a reflection of us – more so than any other kind of furniture. They have many of the same parts that we do – legs, seat, arms, backs and hands. And they cradle us – like a never-tiring skeleton – after a long day in the world.
You can abuse them, and they won’t go away. They get better looking with age. And if made well, they will never leave you.
I can’t think of a better way to tell my family that I love them.
A new kit of forged hardware for a three-till tool chest from Horton-Brasses, displayed here on an end piece for an ATC (7/8″ x 21-7/8″ x 24″), so you can get a sense of scale.
We got our hands on a set of new hardware for the “Anarchist’s Tool Chest” (or any large chest, really) from Orion Henderson at Horton Brasses – he’s calling it “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest – Reforged” – because it is hand forged for the company by a blacksmith. (The company is still offering the original kit, too.)
The kit includes two surface-mount chest lifts (HF-46; 6″ wide x 3″ tall) with square-head bolts included, two hinges (HF-49; 1-1/2″ x 2″ x 1/8″; fits stock 3/4″ to 7/8″ thick) with matching black screws, two sets of small ring pulls (HF-51) for the top two tills and one set of large ring pulls (HF-52) for the larger bottom till. (All the components are also available separately.)
A close-up look at the lifts.
This is some beefy, beautiful stuff. I think its rugged handsomeness will look great on a traditional tool chest, and I hope to order a set to install on the almost-finished ATC that is awaiting my return to the Lost Art Press shop. (I’ll be selling that chest, so the hardware and other finishing touches will be up to the buyer, of course).
And you might be wondering why only two hinges instead of the usual three Horton Brasses PB-409 hinges I’ve been using on these chests: These are substantial enough that two ought to be plenty strong. Christopher Schwarz assures me this is so, and he has made a number of ATCs with but two Peter Ross hand-forged hinges of various designs, so he would know. (For the record, I still think Peter Ross’s chest hardware is the cat’s meow – but this nice set is a fraction of the cost.)
Ring pulls.
Horton is also offering a smaller version of the chest lift (HF-45; 3″ wide x 2″ tall) that I think would look great on a Dutch tool chest.
If you’ve ever visited our storefront, you might have noticed that we wallpaper the men’s room with all manner of woodworking paraphernalia, from posters to old advertisements to poems.
I haven’t put anything up in the women’s room except a portrait of Juliette Caron. Every time I think to hang something in there, I ask Megan: “Is this too creepy for the women’s room?” And the look on her face says: Yes.
Case in point this vintage German newspaper I just purchased after a tip from Suzo “the Saucy Indexer” Ellison. Do I want this guy smiling at me when I do my business? Probably not, but it’s going in the men’s room anyway.
I hope (government mandates permitting) that you can come see the bathrooms for your own self. We still hope to open the doors to the public on June 13, 2020, for a special open day.
What’s going to be special? Blemished books. We are trucking 14 boxes of damaged and returned books to the storefront for the occasion. They will be 50 percent off of retail – cash only. (No, we cannot put them online. Sorry.) I don’t yet know what titles we’ll have. When I get them here I’ll post a list. But I do know we have a significant number of the now-discontinued “Book of Plates.”
We’ll also have our full line of new books and all the Crucible tools. We can take any form of payment for new books and tools – cash, check or credit.
So get healthy and hope for the best. If June doesn’t work, we’ll reschedule the open day for as soon as it is safe for everyone.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. What’s the image above about? Not sure. The blocks of text below it are from an unrelated article. The caption on the image is, according to a translation from Rudy Everts, basically, “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” Even so, I’m not hanging this one above the Lost Art Press urinal.
