Working with Lost Art Press on “The Handcrafted Life of Dick Proenneke” has been another highlight of being a custodian at Dick’s cabin. It has been one more delight in choosing to work to the best of my ability.
My wife, K Schubeck, and I spent 19 summers caring for and giving tours at Dick’s cabin; the summers immediately after Dick could no longer live there. As tour guides, we met visitors so emotionally affected by arriving at Dick’s cabin that they kissed the beach, wept or spent time wandering around the cabin in a world of their own. After their initial reaction, they wanted to see everything, always wanting to know more than their time with the airplane flying service allowed. In our later years, I was asked almost daily what would happen when we were not there.
It became clear I had a responsibility to write this book. Shortly after starting to write the manuscript, the National Park Service made available a CD of 7,000 pages of Dick’s transcribed journals. Reading his journals I discovered I had not talked about dozens of handcrafted items with visitors at Dick’s cabin. I also learned that my interpretations of other items had not been completely accurate. Reading Dick’s journals opened up a whole new world, one I knew that reverent visitors would have had a deeply felt an interest to learn. Having restored Dick’s cabin, cache and woodshed along with restoring and replicating many of his handcrafted artifacts, no one held the insight into Dick’s handcraft more than myself. For each visitor with an interest in Dick’s handcraft, I knew there were others who would visit in the future, and more who would never be able to make the trip; all would be fascinated by all I knew of Dick’s handcrafted life.
Assuming the writing of this book would be a major effort and result in a voluminous manuscript, hundreds of photos and possibly illustrations, I thought it might be impossible to find a publisher to publish the book in its entirety. I thought I would likely be asked to shorten it by half. If only a shorter version could be a reality, I planned to use the money from that book’s sale to someday self-publish a few copies of my full book – a few books for the historic record. Little did I understand how unrealistic this plan actually was. I wrote the book I knew visitors to Dick’s cabin wanted to hold. Lost Art Press never hinted I revise it into anything else.
A few weeks after submitting proposals to three different publishers, Elan, my child, asked if I had made a submission to Lost Art Press. Being late 2018, I was soon reading Chris Schwarz’s blog, “You Are the Problem,” and the comments that followed. Then I read the blog, “Meet the Author: Jennie Alexander” by Kara Gebhart Uhl. With those two blogs, I knew I wanted Lost Art Press to publish my book.
Chris Schwarz first thought a book about the handcraft of Dick Proenneke was a little too far afield of LAP’s core focus, but he soon thought otherwise. An introductory phone conversation with Chris sealed my desire to work with Lost Art Press. Chris spoke of wanting everyone who worked on the book to be paid well, and that working with LAP would be a collaborative effort. I wouldn’t simply hand them the manuscript, and they’d publish the book. He spoke of using U.S.-sourced high-quality paper and a U.S. printer. And somewhere in there, he let me know it would require a lot of effort on my part.
The intent of this blog is to say “thank you” to the staff at Lost Art Press and especially to Kara Gebhart Uhl who accepted being the lead person in creating this book. Over the course of the past three years, just short of 600 emails have arrived from LAP. Likely 500 of those from Kara. I answered every one as timely as possible, but some required weeks of additional work. There were too many phone conversations with Kara to keep track of; usually when I wanted a clarification “right now.” And from the response rate I believe Kara never ends her workday even as she juggles life as a wife, mother and author. Kara edited and then reedited without complaint and never showed frustration with the task ahead.
Dick’s journaling contained a lot of misspelled words because that is how Dick wanted it written. Initially, I was not going to change any of his words because I knew it was his wish that any use of his journals hold true to what he was writing. As the manuscript started taking the form of a book, I started seeing words I thought Dick would likely appreciate having corrected and words that may have been impossible for Jeanette Mills, who transcribed all of Dick’s journals, to have deciphered. The process of what to change and what to leave as Dick wrote was ongoing throughout the process of this becoming a book. Kara was consistently understanding, engaging and questioning without directing the outcome. She was also tireless in getting sections of my own writing corrected and flowing smoothly.
In writing the manuscript, I noted places where about 350 photos or illustrations might fit. For 50 years I have been inspired by Eric Sloane’s books with his detailed illustrations. Kara, with Chris’ concurrence, suggested a mix of both photos and illustrations, which was almost too much for me to believe because that was what I had envisioned without clarity and had not spoken. I sent 1,200 photos (multiple photos for each of the 350 locations) to LAP with captions that located each within the manuscript. Kara and Chris went through all of them and made suggestions as to which photos they thought would best fit with the text, which would be best as illustrations, and which I needed higher resolutions images. I thought all of their selections were perfect.
I want to jump forward a little. Linda Watts laid out the pages of the book – the placement of the photos, illustrations and text. The single most high moment in the past few years of working with LAP was when Kara sent me the first few pages of each chapter, as Linda had designed them with photos, text, illustrations and open spaces. I was awed with Linda’s art, the craft of putting a cutout of a detail of an item over the corner of a photo of the entire handcrafted item. Linda’s design was beyond my wildest dream for the beauty of the book. Holding this book is to appreciate Linda’s amazing talent.
Elin Price provided a couple sample illustrations, each drawn from a photo and a sentence or two from me. They each required some minor adjustments to meet what I was looking for. It made me aware that if I were creating the 60 illustrations for this book, I would find it impossible to meet my expectations without much more written detail for what was being asked. I wrote 50 pages of instructions for Elin and felt awful for being so nit-picky. Of all the remaining illustrations, there may have been a couple that I ask for minor adjustments.
Upon reading the book, a friend said something like, “Years ago I had several books full of wonderful illustrations … I don’t have the books any longer but those illustrations were my favorite … you [Monroe] would know who I am talking about.” When I said, “Eric Sloane,” his face lit up. He said, “When I looked at Elin’s illustrations it brought me back to spending time enjoying the illustrations in Eric Sloane’s books.” His comments were the highest compliment anyone could bestow upon Elin’s contribution.
Brendan Gaffney accepted the challenge of creating the map. I didn’t have a vision of how to create three maps on a single page, each map is a more zoomed-in image or even that three maps on the same page was what was needed. It took a great deal of back and forth between Kara, Linda, Brendan and myself. Brendan kept producing image after image until everyone was completely satisfied. I could not be more impressed with Brendan’s map. I know it would have been a much more straightforward process if I had a clearer image going in. Brendan was the perfect person. If he was frustrated with the process, he did not let it show.
Elan Robinson, my child, was asked to create an illustration for the front of the book on very short notice just as it was going to the printer. It is now confirmed that Chris Schwarz never sleeps! Elan, Chris, Kara and I were all on the email thread throughout those last few days. Elan sometimes emailed a question to Chris very late at night from the West Coast, and I was always impressed with Chris’s almost instantaneous responses as if this was the only thing on his table.
Meghan was the first person I communicated with three years ago and is now the person making sure a few books are sent my way. With zero exceptions, collaborating with each person at Lost Art Press has been a beautiful experience.
I have not communicated with Nancy Hiller but many times felt her positive and supportive presence throughout this process. I knew she was close by.
I once pushed the send button on a whole string of messages between myself and Kara, to someone it was not intended for. I heard back from the unlucky recipient of the emails but will not get into their response. When I confessed to Kara, she responded, “Oh goodness, don’t worry about this at all. We all make mistakes like this. …
“Chris recently reminded me that he and John Hoffman have a saying when anything difficult comes up with any of our books (and know that every single one of our books – even those we write ourselves – have problems): If it were easy, everyone would do it.
“This book didn’t exist before because there was no one else but you who was willing to put in all the time and effort – and deal with all its problems. But that’s part of what makes it so special.
“Someday I hope you can make the trip to Covington, Kentucky, and we’ll take you out to dinner and share the many mistakes we’ve made over the years, and the many problems we’ve encountered, but also the many joys and wonderful experiences we’ve had because we’ve forged ahead regardless.”
Collaborating with Lost Art Press has been one of those wonderful joys of my life.
Nancy Hiller’s forthcoming book of essays, “Shop Tails,” (hopefully out later this fall) is a companion book to her first book of essays, “Making Things Work.” In “Making Things Work,” Nancy shares her life story as a series of vignettes, each with a lesson about craft, business and personal relationships, all centered on cabinetmaking in some form.
While cabinetmaking is central to “Shop Tails” simply because a) Nancy is a cabinetmaker and b) many of the animals featured live in her home and shop, the essays in this book aren’t all about cabinetmaking – or the business of, or the art of, or the joy of. If “Shop Tails” were a carousel, woodworking would be the center pole. It’s always there, but it’s the wildly painted horses moving up and down and the amusing characters sitting on each that have your attention.
At first, Nancy wondered if we’d even publish it. And I suppose, if you look at our catalog of books, it can feel “off brand.” But we had no hesitation. As Chris recently said to me, “LAP isn’t one thing. And it will be different tomorrow.”
It’s certainly not necessary to know an artist to appreciate their art. But I do believe doing so can add depth. Sometimes curiosity’s reward is intimacy coupled with better understanding, especially when considering a person’s background, even in terms of craft. So if you enjoy reading our Meet the Author series or Nancy Hiller’s Little Acorns, or if books like Trent Preszler’s “Little and Often” (William Morrow) are on your nightstand, you’ll likely enjoy Nancy’s latest offering.
This, from Edith Sarra, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, Indiana University-Bloomington, after reading “Shop Tails”: “It’s hard to describe these essays without lapsing into the kinds of qualifiers that usually sound (but definitely are not, in this case) overblown: breathtaking, searing, hilarious, intricate, and above all else – wild and original, like nothing else I’ve read (and I read a lot of memoiristic narrative, across three languages, and many centuries).”
And now, an excerpt from Chapter 15, “Warring Parties (2011-2017),” with a good mix of cabinetmaking and memoir.
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
About a year after Winnie died, I was ready to get another dog and fantasizing about a trip to the animal shelter. At the time, I was working on a job that involved refacing and modifying the kitchen cabinets in a newly built house. The place had been built on spec, so the builder had been careful about where he invested resources. The kitchen had a modified galley layout – base cabinets and uppers against the back wall, stove in the center and a capacious pantry unit on one end, all facing a big island of matching cabinetry that housed the sink, dishwasher and one of those pull-out-then-pull-up mixer stands I’ve always considered a stupid waste of space – and never more so than in a small kitchen such as this one. The cabinets had been built by a local shop. They were perfectly well made, but nothing that I would call craft. The carcases themselves were functional and made to cutting-edge standards, with undermount drawer slides and so on; it was the parts you could see – the doors, drawers and end panels – that were the problem.
The clients had been referred to me by one of their colleagues. Martha said they were happy with the basic cabinets, but there was something she couldn’t stand about their looks. As soon as I arrived for a first meeting, I knew what it was: The cabinets were “walnut,” which in this case meant maple-veneered MDF with a semi-opaque medium-dark-brown finish. Martha’s eyes were used to real wood.
By way of illustration, I pointed to the cutting board by the sink. “This is walnut,” I said. I didn’t criticize the cabinets; I simply explained that the builder had probably chosen them because they were well made and more affordable than they would have been with walnut faces. She listed the details she wanted to have changed and I put together a proposal, which she and her husband accepted. The scope of work included removing the mixer stand, which I took to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore; refacing the cabinet end panels, including those on the island; making new doors and drawer faces; and switching out the vaguely Craftsman-style brackets supporting the overhang of the island counter with more modern brackets in welded metal. I was especially keen to replace the glazed doors at the top of the cabinets along the wall; instead of making them with rails and stiles, the original cabinetmakers had simply cut out a rectangular opening in each blank of MDF, probably with a CNC router, and left the inside corners round. In place of glass bead, they’d fastened the glass in the rabbet with flexible “glass bead” in “walnut.” Ouch.
I refaced the cabinets with custom-veneered panels that I cut to size, edged and fitted by hand. I made new glazed doors out of solid walnut with mortise-and-tenon joints, proper rabbets and wooden glass bead. Then I took them to a locally owned fabricator, Heitink Veneers, to have them faced with sequence-matched offcuts from the rest of the doors and drawer faces so the grain would run continuously from the tops of those doors through the ones below.
Late in the day, I was still dreaming about getting a dog when Mark texted me that he had a surprise waiting at home. “Is it a dog?” I asked. He refused to say. If it was a dog, that would certainly be a wild coincidence. As I pulled into the parking area at the top of the driveway that evening, a young cream-colored dog with rusty speckles on her legs ran down the hill from the house, barking ferociously, convinced that she was guarding Mark and Jonas from an intruder. “Henny!” I cried, the name inspired on the spur of the moment by her spots, which reminded me of a speckled hen. “It’s OK! I live here. I’m not going to harm your men.”
Mark told me how she came to be there. He’d been on his way home, driving along a favorite back road, when he reached a three-way intersection. The dog was standing there while two other drivers, who had each pulled over, were discussing what to do. “I’ll take her,” said Mark. He picked her up and held her in his arms. “She smelled like a baby,” he remembers; she was perfectly clean and well fed, not the condition you’d expect in a stray. Like Lucy, she appeared to be a cross between a pit bull and a Lab.
We reported her to the shelter, certain her owners must be looking for her, but no one ever called. So she joined our household.
I often took Henny to my shop, where she dreamed of playing with Louis. In typical feline form, he refused to acknowledge her presence. She’d lie down on the floor in disappointment and chew wood scraps to console herself. When I delivered pieces of work downtown, I took her with me in the truck. She sat in the front seat and napped, waiting for my return. Though quick to bark in defense of her family, she was exceptionally ingratiating toward one person: Mark. She’d laid her claim on him the day he brought her home. With the utmost delicacy, she would crawl, not jump, into his lap, and gaze adoringly into his eyes. She grudgingly acknowledged that I was the one who shared his bed.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
At 2 p.m. (Eastern time) on Friday we will open up ticket sales for our Backwoods Chairmakers event that will take place on June 2 at Berea College.
Tickets will be $33 for the event. This fee covers only the honorariums for the 13 chairmakers who have agreed to attend. Berea College Student Craft and Lost Art Press have both volunteered time, people and space to make this event affordable for everyone.
However, if you would like to add a little extra to help cover lunches for the attending speakers, credit card fees and gasoline, you can – only if you want, of course.
The event will begin at 9 a.m. on Sunday, June 2, and will end at 5:30 p.m. There will be demonstrations, lectures, a gallery of chairs by the chairmakers and opportunity to meet the makers and Andy Glenn, the author of “Backwood Chairmakers.”
We have space for only 200 attendees. And each ticket buyer will be limited to four tickets (to prevent scalping).
The tickets will be sold through our Ticket Tailor website (the same site that handles our class registration).
Recently, Owen Madden started a book club, and he wants you to join.
A professional cabinetmaker from upstate New York, Madden works as shop foreman at Rowan Woodwork.
“At our shop, we have a monthly meetup, and I get to meet some of the most talented woodworkers and artists,” Madden says. “Most of the conversations anchor around something learned from a book, at which point I write down that book and add it to the endless queue. I found that the best nuggets of information come from the discussion and innovation around the text. Naturally, I wanted to create a more organized space for these conversations so I could garner as much as possible.”
Madden, whose past work ranges from historical preservation and replication to modern architectural millwork, says he enjoys the community aspect of woodworking, trading stories and techniques about the craft.
We at Lost Art Press love Madden’s idea and hope to support the club in the future with virtual visits from some of our authors during meetings.
“The first book was selfish,” Madden says. “Nancy is a hero of mine, and I find that book relates to anyone who wants to make great, lasting things that connect to the people we make them for.”
Here’s how the club works:
Madden will set up monthly meetings to discuss each book. Longer books may require a couple of meetings.
“I would love to have everyone involved in some sort of conversation, be it on Zoom, Discord or even in-person splinter groups in their own community,” Madden says. “It’s still so new the structure will probably build as we have some meetings.”
You can learn more about The Woodworker’s Book Club here. You can follow the club on Instagram here. And you can join the club’s Discord channel here.
As for the next book?
“After this one, I’m going to do a poll and see,” Madden says. “I also think it would be cool if the guest moderator picked the next month’s book. It’s all fluid and new still, so we will just see what works and what doesn’t.”