Pull up a chair

My anthology of chair-like objects

Over the years I’ve posted the various chairs, stools and benches I’ve made on Instagram. As I embark on the first chair for this blog, I feel compelled to gather those predecessors together here in a gallery. There happens to be twelve of them, so you can consider this my dirty dozen of chair-like objects. There’s a couple of my stools in there, which is the dirty part.

In chronological order, here is my chair-like object back catalogue. Our timeline starts in 2016. Much of what you see here is inspired by the writing of Chris Schwarz. I feel as though he groomed me through several books and a week-long course, to the point where I wanted to make chairs independently. Not like R Kelly, this is more the good kind of grooming. But maybe I only thought I wanted to make chairs because he told me that was normal and everyone else was doing it. I’m so confused…

1. The OG was this chopping block on legs, which was my first foray into staked construction. It’s kind of primitive, which feels fitting as the proto-chair that led on to things you can actually sit on. Over the years the bottom had rotted a little on a damp floor, so the legs pounded in nicely and haven’t moved to this day. I mostly use this for chopping kindling and my back thanks me each time.

   

   Old Stumpy

2. Next up were these staked saw benches from The Anarchists Design Book. You might recall a couple of them being part of The Four Sawhorses of the Apocalypse. But how, you say, were there four to begin with and now there are only two? Well, you can see one of them is shorter than the rest. A saw pony if you will. That’s because I cocked up my first go at drilling and had to cut the end off. I then went on to split the tops of the pony and one horse as I over-zealously pounded the legs into the laminated tulipwood tops. Tulip turns out not to have much give in it. But it burns nicely in the fire. I think the salvaged ash legs became chisel handles.

   

   Two saw horses and a pile of horse meat

3. We’re getting closer to chairs. I kind of wanted to creep up on them, as like many flat woodworkers, the idea of chairmaking freaked me out. The angles just seem a lot to deal with. This stool was my first item of seating and was made following nothing more than ideas in my head. The seat was saddled with a gouge and a prayer. It ended up with a rather more gynaecological pommel than I would make now. If I make another stool I will put the two legs at the back to resist tipping. On this stool, if you lean back a little to resist the unwanted attention of the pommel you run the risk of going over backwards. All that said, it is still my only workshop stool and I sit (delicately) on it frequently.

   

   Once seated, this stool knows you more intimately than your wife does

4. Next up is not a chair, it’s a Roman workbench, loosely as per another C Schwarz design. It qualifies in part due to its staked construction, but also as it is the most sat upon object in my workshop. It has adopted a role as visitors bench, which it does ably. Shown here before I drilled the dog holes in the top, not that you need those to sit on it. The top is a slab of Lime, not really a traditional bench making material, but is what I had. The legs are Accoya offcuts from my window-making period.

   

   Visitors bench for those freaked out by The Four Sawhorses of the Apocalypse

5. Can it be true? An actual chair? It most certainly is. This Welsh-ish stick chair was built under the expert tutelage of Chris Schwarz in 2018 at the London event organised by Derek Jones. Over the course of a week we went from raw timber to a completed chair and my chairmaking virginity was lost at the hands of a wild-haired American. He was gentle, but thorough. This was back in my laser cutting days and we were exhibiting at the show Derek had organised the weekend after the course. I arrived with a car full of products to sell, as well as our display stands. By Friday afternoon I also had a chair to sit on whilst awaiting customers.

   

   My chairmaking cherry

6. One lunchtime during the course in London, Chris and I got talking about chair templates. I’d been thinking that laser cutting was the ideal medium to create these and Chris had arrived at a similar thought. We agreed that I would take a shot at making them for the chair we were building that week. Upon returning home with a copy of Chris’s original templates, I set about reverse engineering the details from those, alongside my completed chair. This is the test chair I made from the first set of templates to ensure they worked. We went on to sell the templates through various outlets and I know they’ve started many a chairmaker on the journey, which pleases me.

   

   The Template Tester

7. The next one is what I would call a cabinetmakers approach to a stool. Over the 2019 New Year holiday we stayed in an AirBnB in Harlech, North Wales. I think we doubled the out-of-season population of the seaside town when the three of us arrived. In the tiny cottage was a stool that caught my eye, so I snapped a few photos and later reverse engineered the geometry from those. I love the end result, but this is a hard way to make a stool. The original had a certain wonkiness, which I tried to emulate to some degree, without it becoming a pantomime. Much more effort than applying more regular chairmaking techniques, which I guess is why people don’t usually make them like this. I sit on this stool to put my shoes on every day when I leave the house for my daily walk.

   

   The Harlech Stool - a long way round to make a simple thing

8. This one makes me both smile and feel a little sad. Who could not love a half-size chair? Surprising to all is how small a half-scale chair turns out to be. When we were still making the chair templates it was the work of moments to scale them down, which we did for a few people. To my disappointment no-one ever asked for a scaled up set to make a massive chair. I made myself a set for a half-size chair and this is the result. The sad part is that Ernie is in the picture for scale purposes, and sadly since last Summer he is no longer with us. This was taken during COVID lockdown and he had wild hair, like we all did at that time. He was the sweetest boy and we miss him.

   

   Neither Ernie or I tried to sit in this tiny chair, but we were both thinking it.

9. This is a garden bench. It was the last thing I made before I caught COVID for the first time in April 2020 and fucked up my lungs forever. It’s made from Accoya - yes more leftovers from window making. It’s an expensive wood, but ideally suited to something that lives outdoors as it will resist rot for 40 or more years. Even when untreated. And buried in the ground. I suspect it will outlast me.

   

   Who wants to live forever? Well this bench is going to try.

10. Every old man needs a footstool and this is mine. I wanted to adopt a radical rake and splay on the legs to create a dramatic look. I think it strikes a really modern, somewhat oriental style, which I like. Even though it is only about nine inches high, I sometimes stand on it to get a different perspective on the living room. While I’m up there I experience what it would be like to be 6’5”, which is quite an eye opener. What a time to be alive.

    

    A short man’s viewing platform, doubling up as a footstool

11. This low back chair is important to me, being my own design from scratch. That is if ‘from scratch’ is even possible. We are after all, influenced by every chair we’ve ever seen, sat in, made from plans or copied. So there’s nothing new under the sun, but it’s still mine. It was whilst designing this chair that I conceived of the Chairpanzee angle calculator. Developed by Chris and I, the tool is now sold by Lost Art Press here. If you have any ideas of designing chairs, it’s an inexpensive aid that will make the process of figuring out the angles that little bit easier.

    

    RIP General Finishes Blue Moon paint, we will miss you. Actually I have a tin and a half in stock, so I’m good for ages. But for the rest of you…

12. And so we arrive at the present day, with the Chairmaker’s Plant Stand. But you already know about that, because I told you about it here. Is it a chair? No. Could you sit on it? Probably, but you might not walk the same ever again after you did.

    

    The end of our story so far

I just got a message flash up saying “near email limit”, which is telling me to shut up now. I don’t know what anyone else got from this, but I enjoyed the trip into the past. And my ongoing self-therapizing is what we’re all here for after all.