I’m now back home from rural Wales and reflecting on what was a very productive week at Chris Williams’ workshop. The five days yielded a beautiful chair made by Chris (which other than a lick of paint, is now complete), nearly 700 photographs, and endless pages of detailed notes on the build process. Everything we need to now write the “make a stick chair” section of The Life & Work of John Brown. This feels like a huge milestone. A big thanks must, of course, go to Chris Williams. Over the course of the week Chris not only built a beautiful chair, but he maintained good humour when asked to hold awkward positions for repeated photographs, and answered all of my questions patiently and with clarity. His generosity with his knowledge and experience is what makes this book possible
And that’s a wrap!
I’m still sifting through the photos (and it will take a couple of days to properly survey everything) but in the meantime, here is a taster of what you can expect from the book.
Saddling the seat with an adze
Stick shaping with a draw knife
Scraping the arm
Cutting the swan neck on the doubler
Drilling the seat
Paring the sticks flush to the arm
Completed arm
Damn looking great, a true tribute to John Brown, after re reading his articles I wish I had the wherewithal to do it his way, but unfortunately that won’t pay the bills
Is the book going to come out as a companion to Lost Art’s version of Welsh Stick Chairs? Can’t wait to see it either way!
Hi Tom, glad you’re looking forward to the book! The Life and Work of John Brown was conceived before LAP secured the US rights to Welsh Stick Chairs, so I suppose you could say that the re-print of Welsh Stick Chairs is a companion to The Life and Work of John Brown. In any event, we’re hoping that when read together the two books will give a detailed account of John’s work 🙂