uniformity and individuality

The more chairs I make, the more they both look similar to one another yet still have unique characteritics. They show my hand and my design choices. Years back, after reading the writings of chairmaker John Brown, I was confused by his mention that he’d wait until his chairs were built before judging their quality. In essense, he wasn’t sure if he’d like the chair until it was made. I thought, how could he not know along the way?

John didn’t work with patterns, and he changed/refined his details with each chair, as his experience and preferences changed. John constantly changed his design decisions for a given chair, changing the back stick lengths change the look, as do different rake and splay angles below a seat, or the detailing on a crest. Then there’s always the challenge of craftsmanship during a build, though the perils of an unsuccess build lessen with experience (but don’t all together go away).

I’ve thought more of John Brown recently as I’ve built rocking chairs, and documented the rocker build for Backwoods Chairs. Each rocker I build is slightly different….different detail choices, different execution, along with the inherent imprecision of green woodworking, and it leads to a slightly different chair each build. And I like spontaneity in making. It’s something I love about chairmaking. I find that design is not static but a moving target which changes with each chair. Something as minor as a 1/4” difference in the flair of the upper back posts makes a decided difference in the feel of the final chair. And sometimes I don’t know how the chair will work, or how I’ll like it, until I put the final coat of finish on it and step back to take it all in. That’s when I believe I know what John’s talking about with chair design. The chair has a character of it’s own. Sometimes I like one I’ve built more than another. What’s interesting is that guests to my shop often choose different chairs as their favorites, making this seemily a subjective exercise.

I’ve embraced this aspect of nonconformity with my rockers. Each one still chases the “ideal” chair I have in my mind, and I hope that doesn’t change with time. Though I suspect at some point I will have chased after every possible change, tested each variable and refined the chair to the point that I cannot think of any way to improvement. This is theory, of course, since it’s a point miles away into the future. But I hope reach it some day.