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Editor’s note: This is the second Chair Chat with Rudy and Klaus where today we discuss a chair that was sold by a Welsh antiques dealer represented as being from Bronant in Cardiganshire. We don’t authenticate chairs – we just talk about what we like and don’t like. This one is another three-legged thing measuring 22″ wide, 15-3/8″ deep and 41″ tall.

I adore all three-legged chairs (it might have to do with my three-legged cat) but this one is especially special.

Chris: What I love about this chair is it’s so simple below the seat and has a lot going on above the seat. Like wearing a tux and a Speedo.

Klaus: Good analogy. Everyone can relate to that, Chris. It’s incredibly beautiful. First of all, I love the wear on that finish.

Rudy: Funny how it’s worn on all sticks.

Chris: Yeah. Do you think the wear is authentic?

Rudy: Maybe, maybe not…

Klaus: Looks like it’s rubbed off. Not by buttocks, I mean.

Rudy: If the sitter had a large enough back to reach those outer long sticks…

Chris: That’s what first jumped out at me. The wear on the back looks right. But it must have been a fat dude wearing a 120-grit T-shirt to get the sticks that way.

Rudy: Exactly!

Klaus: How common is it to manipulate a finish in antique furniture?

Chris: Very. But aside from that, I love the boxy top.

Rudy: Yup, me too. The crest adds a lot to the overall appearance too.

Klaus: Very compact and perfectly proportioned. If the back was longer, it would tip the balance, I think.

Chris: Totally agree. I tend to like compact backs. Though they are much harder to make comfortable.

The three-piece armbow shows great skill. I think the ends of the joint are beveled in. But it’s a bit tricky to see with the photos.

Rudy: What is funny though is that one stick that protrudes on the right arm. Was that a repair?

Chris: A repair or a stick that has come loose from the mortise below. Odd how they antiqued it….

Klaus: If it was a repair, then why let it protrude like that?

Rudy: …and somehow it has the same wear as the sticks around it…

Chris: Exactly! Anyway, getting away from the CSI Wales, I also adore the comb.

Rudy: It is a thing of beauty in its simplicity.

Klaus: I like that that subtle bend to the comb. A good crest can really top off a chair

Chris: And the ends. Not an obvious shape until you see it. Like a stone worn by a river.

Rudy: Or by a fat back.

Klaus: Oooh, poetic analogy again, Chris!

Rudy: And there is no doubler.

Klaus: The scarf joint eliminates the need for that, I guess.

Chris: Indeed. Bent arms and the scarf allow you to get away with that. I gotta think that the arms are bent branches or roots – like what Emyr Davies and Chris Williams say.

The top of this chair is just perfect. The unusual stuff is in the seat.

Klaus: That seat grain pattern looks like the universe itself.

Rudy: What strikes me is that the seat is so thick, yet it doesn’t appear clunky or out of balance.

Chris: I LOVE the chunky seat. But I don’t have a butt, so perhaps I am just jealous.

Klaus: Very nice. And no bevel on the underside? Wait, there IS a small bevel actually… And this is what John Brown called a modified seat, isn’t it?

 

Chris: Yeah. And I REALLY want to know more about those.

Rudy: Yup! With three pegs going through the added piece from the front. Do you think the maker used glue in addition?

Klaus: I recently asked chairmaker Chris Williams about this subject. He pointed out that the arms always dictate everything. Which means that the front short sticks would come too close to the edge if the maker hadn’t made that add-on. And rather than shortening the armbow – if he only had that particular piece of ash seat available – he’d have to extend the seat. And there likely was no glue available when that was built.

Chris: I agree. But what about when the modification looks later than the chair? I assume these were added for comfort or another reason.

Klaus: If added at a later stage it must have been for added comfort, I agree.

Rudy: Part of the seat could have snapped off, but that is not so likely with a seat this thick…

Chris: I assume so. But we don’t know. What we do know is that it appears on chairs. Sometimes it looks original. Sometimes not. This one could be original. But I’ve seen some that look too recent. And by a different hand.

Rudy: Did you guys spot that big knot right in the seat right next to the back leg?

Chris Schwarz: Yes. I would have hated to drill that back leg mortise. I wonder if the maker was aiming for the knot (assuming he/she drilled from below).

Rudy: The maker could have made it a four legged chair, but instead drilled his mortise right next to a knot… puzzling. But the chair survived fine!

Klaus: Haha. Good point. And what happened on the back corner there? You think it split when he hammered in the stick or drilled the mortise? Or did some drunk Welshman throw the chair out of a window, perhaps?

Chris: I thought it was a defect in the seat. A loose knot?

Klaus: My wife says I’ve got a loose knot, too.

Chris: I think we are much pickier about wood for the seat than earlier makers.

Rudy: But going back to the fact that the chair has three legs: Three legged chairs were usually made to be stable on uneven floors. But this chair does not look primitive enough to me to be living in a barn somewhere. I could be wrong of course, but most three-legged chair examples I have seen were stools, backstools or lowbacks.

Chris: There are some nice three-leggers out there. But you are correct in general.

Klaus: Good point, Rudy. This one is perhaps one step above so-called furniture of necessity. What strikes me though, is how hard it would be for me to make a “primitive” chair like this.

Chris Schwarz: I agree, it’s a trick to have a chair that is so simple, balanced, elegant and rustic. I want to make one. This one just nails it down below. I love the splay on the front legs. Aggressive, but not overly. The maker had a good eye.

Rudy: Indeed. I love the general appearance, very balanced and a great form overall!

Klaus: I also love that the arm tilts ever so slightly upwards.

Chris: I hadn’t noticed. Nice catch! If that’s the case, it allows you to put the back of the armbow closer to the lumbar region. And get the hands up. It shows skill and thoughtfulness.

Rudy: Yeah, and it makes the chair very inviting to sit in.

Klaus: Definitely. It probably pitches the sitter a bit back. The slightly tilted arm adds an upward movement to the look of chair, too. And the sticks are also slightly longer above the arm, than under, which adds to that same upwards movement.  I like that. Makes the whole chair stretch upwards.

Rudy: True. And all this is balanced by the thick seat.

Chris: Agree. I want to sit in it and see how it feels. So, anything bad to say about this chair? Any misses?

Klaus: Hm. well, about the turned legs? I mean, I like them, but..

Chris: They could be shaved. Look at the reflection on the front leg. It suggests a facet to me.

Klaus: Actually, they fit the rest of the chair. I’m not sure hexagonal or octagonal would fit here.

Rudy: My eye is distracted by the nice splay. But I agree, I don’t think hexagons or octagons would have worked as well here.

Chris: Lots of round legs were shaved I think. I really like doing that on Gibson chairs. Looks better than lathe work. Or my lathe work, that is.

Klaus: So the conclusion is that the chair is perfect, then!

Rudy: Do we want to give this chair a name?

Chris: How about Try Tri Again? …after last week’s three-legger?

Klaus: Yeah, that sounds good!

Rudy: Perfect!

Chris: Cool. Thanks guys. These chats are fun. Especially the parts we can’t print.

Megan Fitzpatrick and I have spent the last couple days getting a huge batch of Crucible Card Scrapers finished and packaged up. And today we sent off nearly 700 of them to the warehouse.

I’d like to thank everyone in our supply chain – from the waterjet cutter to our machine shop to our magnet vendor – for busting hump to get these done. But mostly I’d like to thank Megan for helping me plow through QC, assembly and packaging today.

We think these scrapers are the cat’s pajamas. They are easy to sharpen and require little thumb pressure to produce beautiful shavings.

Note that the logo applied to the scrapers is a repositionable magnet and not a sticker. Hence they are a little crooked and off-center. You can satisfy your OCD to the max as the magnets are a precisely shrunk shape from my CAD drawings of the scraper.

Anyway, they are available now for shipment – $20 plus domestic shipping. You can read all about them (and how to sharpen them) here.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. Brendan Gaffney is working on a huge batch of lump hammers that we hope to finish next week. Details, as always, on our Instagram account.

This post is a continuation from a series of posts following a “read-along” or book club of sorts. This week, I’ll be discussing a third chunk of “A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook” by James Krenov, up to page 69. Next week, we’ll read up to page 78, and you can leave comments and questions about pages 70-78 in the comments section below, which I’ll answer and incorporate into next week’s post. This is a short passage, but it makes the most sense for dividing up the reading. There’s a lot to talk about in those two passages!

We are halfway into Krenov’s first book – and only just getting into what this book was about. Up to now, we’ve been wrestling with his words, but he was a cabinetmaker. So, maybe we should look at some of his work.

After all, Krenov was as much a cabinetmaker as a writer. It’s a funny thing to say, to split his identity one way or the other. By 1976, he’d been writing since he was just a teenager and had published several stories and travelogue. He’d only been working with wood for 18 or 19 years. In some ways, Krenov was a writer all along, but it’s clear that his life focused on and rallied around his craft once he discovered it. “Cabinetmaker Laureate” is the term I’ve been using for a while, and I think it’s apt. I spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff.

So, let’s look at some furniture. I particularly like the three pieces that were detailed in last week’s reading, which is why I wanted to draw your focus to his work in this part of the book. They span his career up to this point, they’re aesthetically varied, they’re stunning work and I have some great details and even “fact-checking” for each of the three.

The first of the three is the “Violin Cabinet.” Now, usually, I follow the name of the piece with a date – so perhaps I should have written “Violin Cabinet” (1969), which bears the date Krenov assigns the piece in the book. But look at the image below:

Okay, there’s a lot to unpack in that image. First, on the far right (and cropped off on the far left, maybe) is a bizarre piece I’ve never seen of Krenov’s, a “cabinet on a shelf” form – news to me. And speaking of “news” – in the distance, there are two trios of near identical pieces, in scale and form. Was he making multiples? Once again – news to me. The “No-Glass Showcase of Lemon Wood” (1962) is centerstage out on the floor, and on the left, we can see the “Violin Cabinet.”

The reason I present this photo to you: it was taken in 1965, at Krenov’s first solo show, “Liv i Trä” (Life in Wood), in the Hantverket gallery in central Stockholm. You may recognize the plain walls and nondescript carpet – many of the photos of Krenov’s work in his later books, especially those in “Worker in Wood,” were taken at the gallery, because Krenov held several shows here over his time in Sweden.

But again – the photo is from 1965. You can see the “Violin Cabinet” there on the left wall. There’s even a violin inside it, though I doubt it’s the Guaneri that Krenov mentions in “Worker in Wood,” where he provides some more details about this piece. So, the date is wrong, only off by a few years, maybe five. Not a big deal.

But, knowing that the cabinet is from before 1965, more of its features and peculiarities begin making sense. The simple shaping, almost completely rectilinear, was more common in his “early years” (I might define that time period as before his first solo show in 1965). He also used many more softwoods in these years – this could have been his interest at the time, and he may not yet have found the access to the exotic woods that would dominate his “middle years” (the 1970s or so, in my book). The pulls are simpler, and very smooth, with none of the carved facets his later work would have.

So, while the date hardly matters for the sake of “truth,” knowing that this is actually among the earliest work in the book helps us look for a few trends, and understand a bit of how his tastes and practices matured.

The piece is crisp. Larry Barrett noticed in his reading that the reveal around the doors was askew in one photo, but I’m sure it was either age or the angle – the photo above shows how svelte and careful the shaping and polishing was on this piece. Douglas fir is not as soft as pine – but getting such nice burnished edges, what Krenov would refer to as “friendly,” is not so simple. It’s a favorite piece of mine, in spite of it being so simple. Perhaps it’s because it fulfills a purpose so neatly – I need a place to put my violin, here it is. The fine-grained softwoods complement the spruce top of the violin, which is perfectly displayed above shelves for its accessories. It makes me wish I played the violin, so that I could make a cabinet like this.

The second piece covered in this section of the book is the “Chess Table” (1970). I have no arguments for that date. But, this time there are more details about who designed the piece, not its date. In fact, this is the only piece I know of where another designer worked with Krenov to make a piece of furniture.

Craig McArt was a central figure in Krenov’s career. McArt encouraged Jim to write a book, got his first essay published in Craft Horizons in 1967, and suggested him as a teacher to RIT in 1969 (and again in 1972). McArt had first met Jim in Stockholm in the 1966, while on a Fulbright scholarship to study abroad. McArt worked with Jim in the summer of 1966, in Krenov’s basement workshop. While he was there, he worked on a number of small furniture pieces, including a small piano stool for one of Georg Bolin’s pianos. But, toward the end of his residence in the shop, Krenov asked McArt to design a few pieces. Maybe it was just as an exercise, but McArt was much more technically capable a designer than Krenov was, or wanted to be.

By McArt’s memory, Jim never tried any of his other designs – except for a chess table. None of McArt’s drawings or plans exist any more for this piece, and he didn’t specify which details might be his influence or Krenov’s in this piece – but, this is the only example I know of where Jim solicited any outside design help or work. It’s a vague detail – but nonetheless singular and novel.

There’s a lot to say about the piece, but I think it’s easiest to focus in on the piece as an example of Krenov’s ability to show intention with every decision. There are so many little details. He sorted through the little squares before joining them and find those with the darker tones or color variation and arranged them accordingly. Look at the play surface above. Sapwood in the pearwood squares is arranged just so along the outer edges, the lighter rosewood pieces are in the middle, and so on. Now look at the wedges on the four tenons poking through the top. Two are dark, two are light, again echoing the playing surface.

What’s nice about this isn’t the gimmick – “The wedges are different colors! Cool!” What’s sweet is that every decision about color and grain is intentional, had some thought behind it. I’m never sure where my tastes lie with Krenov’s tables – they are, I would say, the most dated of his work (this is just me talking, not the biography). They tend to be a bit “bell-bottomy,” which I like in some of the cabinet stands, but less so here. But, you can look at every piece making up the table and know that he thought it through. When you start seeing flat sawn and quartersawn legs on the same face of a table (you can’t unsee it now that you know to look for it) you’ll know that not everyone pays attention to it, especially not with the eye that Krenov had. His consideration of grain is exceptional.

Before we look at the last piece, I think it’s important to bring to your attention the writing on pages 58-60. I’d say read it again, if you just scanned. It is, I think, my favorite passage in the book.

But it isn’t my favorite passage because it’s the most inspiring, or the most poetic. I like it because it’s frank. It’s a passage where Krenov shows a side of himself that he didn’t often display in person – nuance and self-reflection. He was famously irascible in his interactions, but a lot of the people I’ve talked with also mention his nuance a reservation, a self-awareness that only a few people really encountered. I can hear some of that in this passage. He’s talking about doubts, discouragement, his own luck, his old age – it’s like a few pages of a memoir, one I wish were much longer. I’ll excerpt a particularly good passage, which was also called out by Merle Hall last week.

“… I am a very lucky person. When I feel lucky in the total sense, I also feel very much ashamed for my weaknesses and the times when I have doubted, the instances when I’ve wasted a bit of what is most valuable in life. Time has passed, and I’m somewhere on a hill now. Anywhere I look around is down. Along the rest of the way, I must be less afraid. And more grateful.”

The last piece pictured in detail in this section of the book is his “Music Stand,” in pearwood. In his larger body of work, this is a piece unique for its specificity in use. Later in his career, when he was able to do speculative pieces without a specific buyer or intended use, he gravitated to cabinets, which provided the forms he may have most enjoyed making. But his music stands, of which he made at least five over his career, are purpose built for a pair of players sitting opposite each other.

The pearwood stand pictured in the book is now in the collection of the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, which has the largest number of Krenov’s pieces of any museum. Still, that collection is only five pieces – Krenov never made enough pieces to be collected in a volume that other makers could muster.

Here, while the intention of wood selection and form is just as salient as the chess table, what I see carefully explored in this piece is his penchant for shaping and fair curves. The legs have a complex set of facets that ground them neatly, one he accomplished with his planes and a spokeshave. The drawers can be pulled from either side, with a pull that is carefully shaped and “let in” to the two drawer fronts in a particularly graceful way. It’s a sweet piece.

Music played an important role in Krenov’s life. His mother was a deep appreciator of opera and classical music. Krenov was fond of musical analogies, and it’s clear that, in music, he found a lot of similarities to his own creative practice. “The cabinetmaker’s violin” is what he called his handplanes. In the photo above, Bernard Henderson and Marcia Sloane played for the class of 1987 when Jim made his last iteration of the music stands. Marcia Sloane would also play for Jim in his last days, bring her cello into his hospital room in 2009. His compulsion to make five of these stands must have had some deeper tie to this relationship with music. The intimacy of their design, too, being made for two players sitting opposite each other, shows a preference for the sensitivity and familiarity required when playing in a duet.

As I’ve been writing this biography, it’s been easy to forget to look at his work, not his books and relationships. Krenov’s personality was terrifically complex. His writing makes that clear enough, and his relationship with the world could be both contrarian and optimistic in the same breath. But, looking at his work, his ability to be present in the execution of a piece of work is clear. The presence of mind to carve a pull and position it to be comfortable for a reaching hand shows a consideration of the user that I don’t see present in much furniture. While my biography does not stray too deeply into a critical analysis of his work, his furniture had so much of him in it that it almost makes up a secondary set of primary sources.

I was excited by some of the comments in last week’s post. Scott, I’m thrilled with all of the remembrances and encounters you’re sharing. A lot of the writing in this book is a slow burn – it’s fun to follow along as you read through with us, and I’m enjoying your notes!

Next week, we’ll read just a few pages, up to page 78. It’s a short read, and it features two distinctly different passages – one about cats, one about Krenov’s process. There’s a lot to unpack, and I have a lot to add about Krenov’s life with animals. So, I look forward to the next post! As before – if you want to join in and read along, please do, and use the comments section below to ask any questions, highlight a passage or make a comment on this next section of the book or the photographed works therein.

I hope everyone is doing well with their time at home, or for those working in essential roles in these crazy times (like my amazing wife), a big thank you. Another week down, and another week ahead, with the hopes that we’ll find some silver linings in all of this.

— Brendan Gaffney