Read “Meet the Author: John Porritt (Part 1)” here. Early on John Porritt (author of “The Belligerent Finisher“) enjoyed playing around with bits of wood in his spare time. In the early 1970s, he carved a face into a piece of hazel and strung it onto leather as a necklace. He used a heated rod…
Read moreJohn Porritt, author of “The Belligerent Finisher,” has been designing and building furniture, restoring furniture and tools, as well as making chairs inspired by older Welsh stick chairs and English country Windsor chairs for more than four decades. Born in 1953 in a military hospital in Aldershot, a town in Hampshire, England, John was the…
Read moreIf you or a woodworking friend are wondering what the heck a stick chair is, we’ve made a page that is a quick but complete introduction to the form. It also explains how all our stick chair products relate to the form. So you can better decide if you should go Old School (“Welsh Stick…
Read moreTouching a surface that had been gently used for hundreds of years is something that cannot be easily replicated. And so, for the most part, I’ve never attempted it. Why? I’ve seen hundreds of new pieces of furniture that have been “aged” through chemical and physical abuse. And to be honest they reminded me of…
Read moreMost professional woodworkers and finishers are guarded about the way they finish their pieces. No matter how many articles or books you’ve read about finishing, that’s only a small part of the knowledge out there. Finishing is still a “black art.” So when Megan and I drove out to John Porritt’s shop in Upstate New…
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