After 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 moreIf you are looking for a travisher, here is another fantastic option: Allan Williams, a chairmaker and toolmaker who makes three kinds of travishers. Recently I ordered two travishers from Allan, a standard one with a 4-1/2″-radius blade and a tighter-radius tool (3″) for fixing student mistakes and doing some work at the back edge…
Read moreThis seven-stick comb-back chair is built from a 2,000-year-old oak tree that was preserved in a Polish bog and recently harvested. The wood, which is remarkable and difficult to photograph, varies from charcoal black to a beautiful olive to a warm chestnut brown. This chair is one of my newer designs; it uses a four-piece…
Read moreAlmost every time I post a photo of one of my chair seats in progress, I get this question: “Do you use an angle grinder and (insert spinning tooling name here) to rough out your seats?” I answer: “No, I use a scorp.” But I don’t really talk about why. I think this sort of…
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