For the last year I’ve been building chairs using slabs of bog oak that are 2,000 years old (according to a carbon dating test) and was harvested in Poland. Furniture maker Andy Brownell is responsible for starting me down this path. He offered me some scraps of bog oak from one of his commission pieces….
Read moreAfter 20 years of studying vernacular chairs in Western cultures, I am happy to state – again and again – something that some people refuse to believe. Chairs do not need stretchers to be strong or to last hundreds of years. The furniture record is clear. Chairs without stretchers survive just fine. They survive for…
Read moreThe following short story was passed to me by a guy at the John C. Campbell Folk School, and it is well worth reading, especially if you are a vernacular chair nerd. Published in the Christian Science Monitor in 1986 (the year I graduated high school), the short story “I’d Like to Make You a…
Read moreWith the Star-M bits and many other similar bits in short supply (in the chairmaking sizes), I had to switch back to spade bits for all my chairmaking activities. This is not a horrible thing. In many ways I prefer the spade bits. They’re cheaper, they are easier for beginners to steer (because there are…
Read moreIf you’re a vernacular furniture fanatic, or you live in Tasmania, you may already know what a Jimmy Possum chair is. If you’re one of the other 7.4 billion people on earth, buckle up and read on about my journey to Jimmy Possum: an unbroken tradition. With international borders reopened, wanderlust took my wife, Kathy,…
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