When Welsh chairmaker John Brown put down roots in Pembrokeshire, Wales, he and his wife, Anne, lived in two railway cars – Fyffes Banana wagons – that had transported fruit around the U.K. up until the 1950s. The railway cars were used as living spaces for many years, until the 1990s when they fell into…
Read moreWhen I came to “A Vampire Chair,” while copy editing Issue No. 1 of The Stick Chair Journal, I side-eyed my own stick chair in my house. Without even reading the first sentence, I thought, There’s more than one? Turns out the story in The Stick Chair Journal is about a fabled chair in Tennessee…
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 more“I do not get your weird chairs,” exclaim about a dozen messages or comments every year. I understand your bewilderment. I remember being a prospective student at Northwestern University in 1985 where I had been paired up with freshmen journalism students. We were supposed to sleep in their dorm rooms and see what university life…
Read moreThe latest issue of Quercus Magazine is an important one. In the March/April 2022 issue, Editor Nick Gibbs pays tribute to chairmaker John Brown. It’s a heartfelt, first-person account of his work and friendship with JB, and it fills in a lot of interesting details about their working relationship. Most importantly, it is an unromantic…
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